Battlefield Hearts Friends
by Trooper 3.6
Summary: In a cosmic fluke, the Battlefield Friends are warped into the multiverse of Kingdom Hearts. Now in order to get home, they must hone their Battlefield skills and fight alongside the keyblade wielders in the most dangerous and chaotic game mode they've ever played!
1. Chapter 1

Sora and Riku both landed at the same time, though Riku's landing was much more graceful than Sora's. Riku gave a gentle laugh and offered his oldest friend a hand up. Sora accepted his help with his habitual goofy grin. "My landings sure need work don't they?" he said.

"Don't worry, you'll get used to it eventually," Riku reassured. They both paused to scan their surroundings, a vast forest with rolling hills visible through the trees and not a soul to be seen.

"Not a whole lot to see," Sora sighed. "Merlin will sure be disappointed."

"I say we explore a little first, you never know what we might find here," said Riku. As if on cue, the world erupted in an explosive geyser of dirt as something very large impacted a few feet away. Sora rolled to his feet and shook the dirt from his head, then froze as he found himself staring down the barrel of a tank. Riku leaped through the air, tackling him to the ground as the tank fired.

"MOVE!" Riku roared, dragging Sora to his feet as he darted off into the trees. Sora followed close behind. The tank fired again, spraying dirt and wood nearby. Neither of them looked back as the tank's engine roared behind them, louder as the distance closed. Both froze in surprise at another vehicle roaring toward them, a smaller, faster one.

"MAKE WAY FOR THE TANK-KILL EXPRESS!" a frantic voice wailed from the quad-bike. Sora and Riku dove to opposite sides as the bike sped through them. A soldier leapt from it and landed between them. His quad bike rammed head on into the tank. The soldier smiled as he pulled some kind of device from his belt. "This just never gets old," he said before squeezing the remote. The tank went up in a blazing inferno as the bike exploded.

Both keyblade wielders stared in wide-eyed amazement as the soldier shrilly cheered his victory. He paused and looked up, as if some words had just appeared in the air over his head. "PROMOTED! PROMOTED!" he shrieked in triumph.

"Oh will you just shut up and get down!" another soldier growled nearby.

"Yeah, man," said another, wearing the white cross of a medic. "There's probably more of them. And watch for snipers!"

"PROMOTE-" the report of a rifle cut the soldier off, a hole burst through his head and he fell.

"I got it," said one soldier, wearing a facemask and carrying a large rifle.

"I got him," said the medic, who rushed to the fallen soldier's side and jolted him with a defibulator. In an instant the seemingly dead soldier was alive again and firing toward the enemy.

The masked soldier took a single shot into the woods then cheered, "Head shot!" None of the soldiers took notice of the startled young men on the ground. Sora and Riku looked at each other in amazement, and shrugged. More soldiers joined them and more shots came from the woods ahead. The soldiers whooped and cheered as they blasted away at each other. A soldiers fell, medics instantly revived them, sometimes were too busy firing. Sora wasn't sure if they should join in or not. They didn't even know what they were fighting over.

Before either boy could cry out, a pair of soldiers leapt upon them, both wore gasmasks and black uniforms. Sora flailed and gasped desperately for help in the unyielding grip of the enemies. Riku fared no better, barely holding back the knife back from his throat. A faint gasp and the slashing of metal on flesh was heard, then repeated. The soldier's grip on Sora's throat went limp as a taller figure tossed the lifeless body away. Sora gazed up in awe at a scowling veteran soldier with a golden eagle emblem on his helmet.

"You two alright there, soldiers?" the Colonel grunted. Both boys nodded in shocked reply. "Then back to it then, this war ain't gonna win itself! Love the JRPG avatars by the way!" he growled before rushing into battle, knife at the ready.

So many questions swam through both their minds. They continued to watch in awe as both sides blasted away at each other in the trees. Soldiers of both sides fell by the score, some were quickly revived with a blast from defibulators, the bodies of those who didn't vanished after a time, only to soon be replaced by identical soldiers with identical voices running in from a distance back. Eventually the shooting died down and the friendly soldiers, whose language Sora and Riku could understand, stood victorious.

"YES! WE WON!" one soldier cheered, the one who had nearly ran them both over with a quad bike.

"WE HAVEN'T WON YET, DIPSHIT!" a soldier beside him roared. "We just took the objective! We need to move on to the next one!"

"Actually, no," interrupted the one in ski mask. "Look the rest of the team took the other two objectives!" The whole team looked up and erupted into cheers.

"TOLD YOU! WE GOT IT MADE!" the support soldier screamed.

"DON'T JINX IT!" the engineer screamed. "They'll be back soon!"

Sora and Riku's eyes widened as they looked up to see a giant blue B floating in the air over their heads. They blinked into the distance to see other letters suspended in the air. "What in the wide, wide, kingdom hearts is going on?" Sora wanted to gasp, but could only mouth the words.

"Hey who are these guys?" the support soldier asked, gazing down curiously on the two boys. Sora and Riku both stood up awkwardly in unison, both stumbling for words as to how they should introduce themselves. "Wow, check out the avatars they're rocking! I wonder how much those cost!"

"Oh great!" signed the engineer. "Anime fanboys, bet they're squeakers too!" he grumbled.

"No, man, I'm telling you they're JRPG fanboys. Like from those Last Fantasy games!" said the other.

"Same, thing."

"Um… Hi, I'm Sora… And this is Riku," Sora tried hard not to look or sound awkward, but fail miserably.

"Um, yeah dude," said the one in the ski mask. "We can see your names just fine over your heads."

"Fanboy noobs! Great!" the Engineer grunted. Then Sora realized the name Engineer was hanging in bright green letters over the soldier's head. As were similar and vastly different and outlandish names were over all their heads. He gasped and nearly fell over backwards as he noticed him and Riku's names floating respectively over their heads.

"Yep, we got noobs on the team," the support soldier smiled, whose air suspended name read Noob. "Just watch and learn from me and Simon here and you'll both be masters of battlefield in no time." Another support soldier with glasses waved casually beside him.

"BULL FUCK!" Engineer bellowed.

"He's right," Medic calmly stated. "You really shouldn't follow their example. If anyone it should be the Colonel," he pointed to the soldier who had saved them both earlier.

"What classes are you two anyway?" asked Recon. "You're not holding weapons or anything?" Sora and Riku awkwardly summoned their keyblades. None of the soldiers looked shocked or surprised so much as confused. "Giant keys?"

"Oh great," sighed Medic. "Everyone go ahead and insert your crude jokes on the chat." As if on cue, a string of perverted jokes appeared in the corner of both boy's visions. Both blushed crimson, trying not to think of the same girl.

"What good are key shaped broadswords gonna do you here?" the Engineer demanded. "This isn't Chivalry!"

"SOLDIER!" the Colonel burst in. "The rookies have the right idea! No honor killing a man with guns. At the start of the match I took out a tank with my knife!" Colonel held up the blade he used earlier to save both keyblade wielders. Both blinked dumbfounded at the two, interlocked bipods dangling from the end of the knife.

"Um, Colonel, maybe you should give the rookies a few pointers," Medic timidly suggested.

"Yeah, better him than Mr. Closet-Call of Duty here!" Engineer snapped at Medic with a glare.

"Alright boys, you're getting the questionnaire," Colonel grunted as he turned to Sora and Riku. "You both got jobs?" The boys nodded and opened their mouths to explain. "Both wrong answers! Going to work equals minus kills, playing Battlefield; plus kills. Lose the jobs! Sex? Either of you having any?" both blushed again and stumbled, wide-eyed, for an answer. "Right answer!" Colonel grunted in approval. "Battlefield is our pussy here! How about shit buckets?"

A nearby explosion cut off the increasingly awkward questionnaire, knocking everyone back and sending a geyser of dirt and grass up into the air. "MORTARS!" Multiple soldiers bellowed as everyone scattered for cover. Sora and Riku scrambled alongside Noob, Simon, and Colonel, diving for cover behind a small hill. Noob and Simon peeked over the top and began frantically firing their machine guns, chattering to the beat of the weapons as they fired. "WFT!" Simon exclaimed. "We're not hitting them!"

"Yeah, no shit, it's because you both SUCK!" Engineer hissed.

"No, man, seriously, we've been doing burst fire like you guys said and still no luck!" said Noob replied into his radio. Sora and Riku barely had time to wonder they could hear the radio chatter loud and clear without headphones of their own. "And they're black!"

"NO SHIT, NOOB!"

"No I mean REALLY black!"

"And that's a bad thing?" Medic hissed, apparently indignant on account of his skin tone.

"Not THAT kinda black, like BLACK BLACK! See?"

"Wow! He's not kidding!" gasped Recon. "They're not in Russian uniforms like before, they're like inky black and… Shit they're eyes are glowing yellow!"

"Oh the jerks just downloaded a patch or unlocked some fancy skin!" Engineer snapped. "Just take em out!"

"Yeah, take em out!" grumbled an elderly voice on the radio. "THEY'RE RUINING BATTLEFIELD!"

"I'm on it," Recon complied. A sniper rifle shot rang out from behind a tree at the other end of the hill. "What the… I just got a headshot but it did NOTHING!"

"I KNOW! That's what me and Simon were talking about!" Sora and Riku exchanged glances, then crawled to the top of the hill beside Noob and Simon. They looked down with vengeful recognition on an army of heartless. The inky monsters stood upright and fired weapons similar to the soldiers, but were impervious to the hail of bullets raining down on them.

"HEY!" Colonel bellowed. "GTFO, CHEATERS! WE DON'T PLAY THAT WAY HERE!"

"Someone get on chat with Admin and ban these fuckers!" Medic growled.

"EVERYONE STAY DOWN!" Sora cried as he stood to brandish his keyblade, Riku did the same.

"We'll take it from here!" Riku grunted as they both charged the heartless. The otherworldly monsters took a moment to notice their attackers. They stumbled and hesitated with the same shock both keyblade wielders expressed at the sight of the friendly soldiers. By the time the heartless recovered and took aim, the boys were upon them. Sora and Riku swung, parried, dodged, and swung again in their familiar dance. The Heartless fell and dissipated with their every strike. The keyblade wielders dodged bullets like raindrops, those they couldn't close the distance to in time they struck with fire, blizzard, and thunder spells.

The Heartless respawned in droves and charged the interdimensional warriors again and again. But eventually their numbers dwindled. The battlefield gamers watched all of this in stark bafflement. What had happened to their beloved game? Was it a virus? A hack? Had the EA executives finally lost their minds and turned the long running multiplayer shooter into an action RPG?

Sora and Riku charged side by side at the two remaining Heartless soldiers, bringing their blades down on the foes in practiced unison. They nodded to each other in approval then turned to the wide-eyed gazes of the soldiers. "Holy shit-bucket!" Medic gasped. Just then Riku's wrist mounted communication device chimed. Cid had rigged it for him as a prototype. He casually pressed the receiver.

"Sora, Riku!" Merlin's voice gasped. "You've got to get out of there now!" A familiar laugh echoed as darkness crept across the sky. The callous cackle of the horned mistress of all evil herself. Some of the soldiers seemed to wince in recognition. "It's Maleficent! She's dragging that entire realm into darkness! Don't worry I have a trick up my sleeve that might save you!" Before Riku or Sora could answer, a blinding light enveloped them.

The Caspian Border flashed with dazzling brilliance for brief seconds, then was plunged into utter darkness. Not night, but an inky black flood of darkness that no light could drive away. What had been a realm of fun, competition, and simulated carnage was now merely a depthless chasm of oblivion.

Sora and Riku blinked several times as their eyes adjusted the milder light of Merlin's house. "Ah, so it worked after all!" Merlin announced in triumph. "My all-purpose recall spell! Quite nifty, if I do say so myself, but sadly cannot be used very often. Such a pity we couldn't save that world, though. What was it like there?"

Sora sighed. "I don't even know where to begin! For starters there were these soldiers and."

"WHAT THE FUCK!" several voices screamed in unison. Sora stumbled and nearly fell. Merlin's house was flooded with several, perhaps dozens of horrified faces, all in heightened states of distress. There in Merlin's living room were the soldiers from the lost world.

"What the hell?" Noob exclaimed. "I'm really standing now! I'm not in my gaming chair anymore! I'M NOT IN MY GAMING CHAIR ANYMORE!" he finished shrieking.

"Where's my bedroom? Where's my house?" Medic asked frantically.

"Where the hell is my shit bucket? Shit! Where's the bathroom?" Colonel grunted in confusion.

Engineer was fast becoming unhinged. "Oh God, I'm not in my house! OH GOD, I'M NOT IN MY HOUSE! OH GOD! OHHHHH! GOD!"

"Dad-blasted VR!" huffed Old Man. "VR is ruining games! AND NOW THEY'VE RUINED BATTLEFIELD!"

"WTF, Bra!" Choppi gasped.

"Oh my God we've been swallowed by the game!" Noob wailed. "THE MATRIX HAS US! WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"SILENCE!" Merlin's voice thundered through the room with the force of thunder, shaking the house to its very foundation. All the soldiers now stood in whimpering, terrified, obedience. "Everyone please, do NOT panic!" Merlin's voice had returned to its normal tone and octave. "Please sit down, everyone, and I will explain everything." The terrified soldiers did as they were told.

Merlin sighed at the realization that this would take some time. "It is just as I suspected, boys," he turned to Sora and Riku, who were almost as flabbergasted as their guests. "The world you boys visited was in fact a virtual world that they were accessing by recreational game consoles via a local electronic frequency."

"A video game?" Sora asked.

"Exactly!" Merlin replied. "It seems my all-purpose recall spell had the side effect of transporting them here along with you. Carbon copying their electronic avatars as themselves into our world. I'll give you all a more thorough explanation in a moment," he briefly turned to his terrified audience. "But for now I need one of you to run to the castle and fetch Cid and the other of you to round up Leon and Cloud, and bring them all here. I think I already have a plan to put these ones to use, and possibly even get them home."

Sora and Riku silently nodded and were off. Sora went to find Cid, Riku to collect Cloud and Leon. Both parties returned to Merlin's house to find the soldiers sitting and talking quietly to each other out in the square. Scrooge McDuck was making a killing, selling ice cream to the new arrivals. Some of them snickered and giggled at the top hat wearing duck as he waddled from customer to customer, though not so much in callous mockery as in surprised recognition.

Sora and the others proceeded past the soldiers to Merlin's front door. But Sora stopped short before entering and stepped to the middle of the square, his face was somber. "Excuse me, everyone!" he called out softly. All eyes were on him. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I can't help but feel responsible for you all being here. We went there to help, to keep another world from being swallowed by the darkness, but it feels like all we did was make things worse. And now you're all stuck here for, I don't know how long. Again, I'm sorry," Sora finished with a sigh.

A hand softly clutched Sora's shoulder, he looked up to see Riku standing beside him. "That goes for me too," he said with firmly but with remorse.

"No need, kid," Medic stood up. "Merlin told us everything."

"Even if you hadn't shown up, the Heartless still might have found their way into our server," Recon said, standing. "If we hadn't been taken along with you, we might have been swallowed up or even possessed like the enemy team was!"

"And the Heartless might have gotten into our REAL world," Simon said as he and Noob stood. Soon all the soldiers were standing.

"The truth is we all owe you our lives, kids," Colonel walked up to keyblade wielders. "Hats off to you, soldier." He finished with a salute. All the soldiers saluted. Sora and Riku both blushed and couldn't suppress their smiles as they returned the salute.

"It's true," said Merlin, emerging from his house with Cid and the others. "Their being stuck here for now is unfortunate, but it DID save their lives. Furthermore we now have a small army to use against the Heartless." The soldiers grimaced in surprise at the last part.

"Whoa, wait a minute here!" Medic stepped forward. "I thought we made this clear earlier, we're NOT real soldiers!"

"Please let me make clear how much I HATE to say this phrase," said Engineer. "But Battlefield is just a game."

"Of course it is," said Merlin. "But even a game can be put to use, with a little imagination and a considerable amount of magic," he explained, though the puzzled looks remained. "Sora, do you recall your friends from Traverse Town on your last visit?"

"Joshua and the others? Yeah, why?"

"Do you recall the game they were being forced to play? A game that Organization 13 had hacked and had tied to the very fabric of the world." Sora nodded. I've been speaking with Cid these past few minutes about a theory we had developed after you returned with your report and I'm certain that we can use the base code of that game these men were playing, eh… Battlefield, and project it into other worlds. Once Cid and I are done with the preparations, they will be able to log in to their game here in the safety of Radiant Garden and have their avatars projected into other worlds. Then they can use their skills and unique capabilities in the game against the Heartless! We will, of course, upgrade their weapons and equipment. And with their help we will be able to stifle the Heartless and the remnants of Organization 13 on multiple fronts!" The crowd stood in shocked silence.

"Wait!" Noob broke the silence. "You're saying, we'll be fighting those things that attacked us at Caspian through the magic web and defeat them by playing Battlefield?"

"Precisely!" Merlin answered proudly.

"And we won't get killed?" Engineer asked. "We'll just respawn like in the game?"

"As long as nothing happens to you here in Radiant Garden, which is highly unlikely given our defensive measures, yes, you will be able to simply keep respawning, at least until the light magic energy is exhausted. And since none of you can wield keyblades you won't be able to close off the worlds from darkness, of course. But you will be able to help save many lives by doing this. And if we are able to preserve enough light magic, I might yet be able to transport you all back to your home world, and just as you were."

"Okay, that makes sense, sure," Recon shrugged. "But, interdimensional game projection or not, this is a real war we're talking about with real lives at stake! And again, we're not trained soldiers!"

"NO!" Colonel growled. "But we ARE trained gamers!" he said as he stepped up closer to Merlin. "It's like I said before, boys. We owe these people our lives. And there are other worlds out there, with other people who could get swallowed up and possessed, just like our fellow gamers on the Russian team earlier. These people need our help and we need theirs to get home. It's time for us to step up to the plate! Man the fuck up! And do what we all do best!"

"He's right," said Noob. "Look around us! We're in a genuine Disney multiverse! You all heard that creepy voice back at Caspian!"

"Yeah! The stepmother!" Simon chimed in.

"Yeah, the…" Noob paused in confusion. "No, Simon that was Maleficent."

"No I'm pretty sure that was Tremaine," he replied.

"Yeah, no, they just sound alike. But I'm telling you, it was Maleficent."

"Um… I don't know."

"OH WILL YOU BOTH JUST SHUT IT!" Engineer bellowed. "It WAS Maleficent, but it was the same damn VOICE ACTRESS!"

"IT DOESN'T MATTER!" Colonel roared. "The point is we have a way to help. I say we do it!"

"YEAH!" the soldiers cheered.

"We savin Disney, Bra!" chimed Choppi.

"HELL YEAH!" screamed a wide-eyed engineer beside Choppi.

"Nobody fucks with DISNEY on our watch!" Noob cheered. "We got us some PRINCESSES TO SAVE!" a roaring cheer went up from the soldiers. "All of us are in this together!"

"That's right!" Colonel grunted.

"Whoever or whatever it is that's after these worlds, we are gonna get em, take their tags, and we're gonna TEABAG THEIR FACE!"

"YEAH!" the roaring voices of 32 soldiers vibrated throughout the town. Merlin smiled with satisfaction and nodded to Cid. He'd have Sora, Riku and the others fill the men in on more of the details while he and Cid got to work. The Heartless and Organization 13 didn't know what they were in for.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's notes: I hope you all enjoyed the last one. Now the BFF's adventure into the multiverse of Kingdom Hearts begins in force. I've been thinking a lot about which world to begin with and I'm going with righting a grave wrong of Disney. I'll be focusing mostly on worlds untouched by the games, anything licensed by Disney is fair game, feel free to throw in suggestions. Enjoy and please review.

The little girl shivered helplessly in the snow in a dark and frigid dead-end alley in the bitter heart of Moscow. She had had no supper, or any other meal that day. Of all the people strolling through the streets, not a single one of them could be bothered to purchase a match from her meager supply in the box now sitting in her lap. There had been kind and concerned faces, worried for her safety as she wandered about the streets, but no sales.

The bitter cold of the Russian winter gnawed at her toes, the flap of her ragged dress did little to help. She looked down longingly at the few remaining matches in her box, yearning to light even just a single one. What she would have given to see her dearly departed granny again and the warmth of her country cottage, a table of delicious food, her shining Christmas tree… She hesitantly reached in for one of the matches when a sudden impact knocked the box from her lap and sent it sailing through the air to shatter on the nearby brick wall.

The girl's eyes widened in horror at her destroyed livelihood and franticly scampered to the shattered box and began gathering up the matches, desperate to keep them dry. As she clenched one of them a heavy boot came down on her hand. She winced and sniffled in pain, having already been on the verge of tears. Her eyes widened as she looked up at the dark, horrifying, soldier glaring down at her.

She recognized him from the red star on his fur cap as one of the Bolsheviks, granny had warned her not to trust them before she died. But this one was different from the uniformed thugs she'd seen threating violence in the streets to those loyal to the Czar. His body seemed to be in misty haze of blackness, like shadows clung to his uniform as would falling snow. His eyes glowed a flaming yellow; not a warming, comforting flame like the kind she yearned for, but a burning, scorching, agonizing flame that clergymen warned awaited the wicked in the afterlife.

She pulled and tugged in vain to free her hand from the boot. The soldier put the full force of his weight down on her tiny hand, causing her to cry out and openly weep. The dark soldier leaned down to snatch up her matches, only letting his foot of her hand to grab the one beneath it. The girl looked up pleadingly into the merciless eyes of the red soldier, her heart sank into a pit of despair as he crushed all her precious matches in his fists and tossed them over his head. The splintered remains of the last of her hopes flickered into the wind. Her teary eyes barely noticed the movement at the exit of the alley.

A storm of fire and thunder burst through the alley, lightning flashed rapidly. The girl felt the inertia of some violent hail zipping around her and red soldier. She instinctively curled herself into a ball and trembled before the fury of the storm. The Bolshevik stood still and silent as a statue. Amid the deafening blasts of thunder she was certain she heard a man's voice chattering along to the beat of the storm. Soon the acrid scent of gunpowder reached her nose and she realized it was a hail of bullets fired from a machine gun, she'd only heard of such terrible things in passing and had hoped never to encounter one in person.

The gunfire stopped as quickly as it started. "Hold on I've got to reload," a strange voice softly chimed from the alley entrance.

"WHAT THE FUCK, NOOB!" another voice hissed in fury. "How could you seriously hit NOTHING?" The girl cautiously opened her eyes to see the wall behind her was pocked with bullet holes, with outlines of her and the soldier plain to see. She gazed gingerly around the unmoving red soldier to see two Russian Army soldiers glaring at each other.

"I'd have been better if I went prone, but I didn't want to hit the girl!" the first voice protested.

"Then why didn't you just knife him?"

"WELL FINE! At least he still hasn't noticed us yet since I didn't hit him!"

"Yeah because you SUCK!"

"BE NICE! AND WATCH THE LANGUAGE THERE'S A LITTLE GIRL HERE!"

"I'LL SAY WHAT I WANT!"

"IT'S A DISNEY MOVIE!"

"IT'S A DISNEY SHORT!"

A rapid movement sped past the two soldiers and the girl flattened herself against the brick wall as another soldier ambushed the Bolshevik from behind, plunging a knife into his neck and throwing his limp body to the snow. The newly arrived Imperial Russian soldier smiled down on his victim with carnivorous glee, a shiny eagle adorned his thick fur cap, belts of bullets dangled from his coat. The soldier looked grimly down on her. "You alright there, little match girl?" he grunted.

The girl took off like a shot. The face and voice of the soldier hadn't softened after killing the red. The utter horror of what she'd just experienced made her forget everything except running away as fast as her frozen feet could carry her. Her breathing was so loud and frantic she barely heard the soldier's cry of protest. The two soldiers arguing at the entrance were still arguing, maybe she could duck between them.

"Whoa, there!" one of the soldiers gasped as he knelt to grapple her. She cried out in fear and flailed hysterically as the strong arms wrapped in a thick wool coat entangled her. She felt like a fish on a hook. "Whoa, whoa, it's okay!" the higher pitched but gentle voice said soothingly. After a moment of futile struggle she paused to look into the eyes of her captor. His eyes were dark and mature, but gave the gentle sensation of one child-like beyond his years.

"Yeah, it's okay, kid," said the other soldier, who knelt beside the other. This one had a thick brown beard and a more mature, but not unfriendly look. "Sorry if we scared you there."

"Yeah, sorry about HIS bad words," said the first. The bearded one glared passionately at him for a moment then sighed in defeat.

"Look, neither one of us is going to yell anymore," said the bearded one.

"That's right, no more yelling, no more shooting. You're completely safe now," the first soldier said. An instant later he was knocked over by a mighty impact. The report of a rifle cracked as he fell. A hole had burst through his head and his kind eyes now stared lifelessly into oblivion.

"CONTACT!" bellowed the bearded one as he took aim with a smaller gun and a deafening spray of bullets burst through the frigid air. The soldier with the eagle on his hat burst from the alley and began firing at the oncoming wave of red soldiers. The little girl stared helplessly into the dead eyes of the first truly friendly face she had seen in countless days. She stood motionless more Imperial soldiers came to the aid of the other two and the gunfire from both sides grew more furious. The snow covered streets were ablaze with automatic gunfire, but the little match girl could only stare in defeated despair at the only person to ever look at her with the warmth of her granny.

"CLEAR!" a soldier with the darkest skin tone she'd ever seen knelt beside the dead soldier and stuck him with a syringe. In an instant life returned to his eyes, the bloody hole in his head had vanished, and he was aiming his machine gun at the enemy. The weapon clicked dry and he calmly went about the laborious process of reloading it. By the time he had finished reloading all gunfire had ceased. "Okay I think that was the last of them," the black soldier proclaimed.

"Oh man, this thing takes way too long to reload!" said the resurrected soldier.

"I'm telling you, you should just stick with the Lewis gun," said another soldier, whose facial features were completely warped in cloth facemask. "It's the best gun in the game for support!"

"No way man! It's like the first gun you get and does the least damage!"

"But it stays of target better! Oh never mind is the girl okay?"

"Oh, right!" the support soldier turned back to her. "You okay, kid?" The girl stood in wide-eyed silence for a moment, still trying to reconcile with what she had seen. He was dead, like granny, but now he was alive again! She didn't know what to say, or how to say it. Tears began to flow freely, but the pain that had become so much a part of her life was gone. She leaped into his chest, threw her arms around him, and sniffled softly against his coat.

After a moment's hesitation, Noob gently returned the embrace. "There, there," he said. The rest of his team looked down at the pair of them. They all recognized her from the famous Disney short, and they all knew what would have been in store for her even if the Heartless hadn't come to claim her. "Guess who her favorite soldier is guys!" Noob cheered softly.

"That poor girl!" Medic softly exclaimed. "We are all she has in the world now!"

"Yeah, as if she didn't already have it bad enough before the heartless showed up!" Recon huffed. "I swear sometimes it feels like Disney bad guys just have nothing better to do!"

"Yeah," Engineer sniffled. "I mean the height of her day would have been burning the last of her matches to imagine she was back home with her dead grandma for Christmas…sniffle…and then freeze to death…"

"Are you okay, Engineer?" Recon asked.

"Yeah!" Engineer sniffle deeply. "I'm fine!"

"I'm not gonna cry too," Medic sniffed. "I'm not!" Moments later Medic and Engineer were both balling their eyes out. Soon Noob and the girl were staring in confusion at them.

"Oh will you all just relax!" Recon sighed. "We're here to save her now, so that sad shit isn't going to happen now!"

"SOLDIERS!" Colonel growled, snapping the whimpering soldiers out of it. "There's no honor in showing weakness before kid-types! When I was her age I watched Old Yeller twice in one sitting, and didn't cry at the end!"

"Oh wow!" Medic gasped.

"That's cold, man!" Engineer blinked.

"What's Old Yeller?" Noob asked.

"You seriously didn't cry at the part where they put Old Yeller down at the end?" Recon asked.

"NO!" Colonel snapped. "Man the fuck up people!"

"And how the hell could you NOT know about Old Yeller?" Engineer glared at Noob.

"Never seen it!"

"Come on, the one about the frontier family and the dad went away on a cattle drive, and the boys befriend a stray dog, and he eventually gets rabies and they need to shoot him?" Engineer carelessly spouted the plot.

"Um, first of all SPOLIER ALERT. And secondly, that's pretty darn dark for a Disney cartoon! Are you sure it wasn't Warner Brothers? They love dark stuff like that! I've seen Batman v Superman!"

"What! It's not a cartoon, it's LIVE ACTION!"

"No, Disney only makes cartoons," Noob retorted with confidence.

"No they don't!"

"Uh, yes they do!"

"How can you seriously NOT know Disney does live action? And Disney has done plenty of dark stuff! Their first movie only opens with some frigid bitch trying to kill her stepdaughter for being SEXIER THAN HER, and ends with a fucking ROCK FALLING DOWN ON HER OFF A CLIFF!"

"ENOUGH!" Colonel barked. "Merlin said this world would be like a capture the flag game, the girl is the flag, let's get her to the objective; the train station!" That was the cue for a new burst of gunfire from enemy reinforcements. "MOVE! GET TO THE TRAIN! AND REMEMBER, IF SHE DIES THIS WORLD GETS SNUFFED!"

The soldiers snapped back into action at the first gunshot. Noob scooped the girl up in his arms and followed the Colonel down the snow blanketed streets of Moscow. The bulk of the soldiers ran with them, a select few stayed behind temporarily to lay down covering fire. Ambushes hit them throughout the city as they ran. The soldiers fought with the fury of seasoned warriors, blasting away without mercy at the persistent, unrelenting foe.

Noob joined the fight with his side arm, balancing the girl on his other arm. "This is AWESOME! I'M LIKE INSPECTOR TEQUILA!" he cheered after downing a heartless soldier.

"Cool it, Noob," Engineer hissed. "Remember it's not a game anymore. And how the HELL have you seen Hard Boiled but NOT Old Yeller?"

"It's called, Diversity," replied Noob. "And I still say that plot is too dark for cartoon movie!"

"IT'S NOT A FUCKING CARTOON!"

"But it's Disney?"

"Some of Disney's greatest shit was live action!" Engineer puffed as the argument went on while they ran.

"Like what?" Noob asked before blasting another heartless rushing out of cover.

"Pirates of the Caribbean!"

"No, that was the guy who did the Rock, and Bad Boys!"

"No it wasn't, well actually it was, but he produced I with DISNEY! Hell, it's only the name of Disneyland's most famous ride!"

"They made a movie based on a theme park ride!" Noob exclaimed. "Who does that?"

"DISNEY!"

"What else have they done, live action?" the soldiers dove to the frozen ground as bullets tore into the troops at the head of the group. They opened fire on the wave of heartless blocking the street corner ahead. Noob and Simon both lobbed grenades and high fived as their kill points appeared at the bottom of their vision. Noob turned back to Engineer as the shooting died down, only to see he had been one of the first men felled during the shootout. Medic tried in vain to revive him but it was too late, he'd have to respawn. Noob sighed, he'd be giving them an earful about this later.

"What other live actions has Disney done?" Noob asked Medic as he picked up the girl again and they all resumed following the Colonel.

"Lots! They've done some Star Wars movies now, all those Avenger movies! National Treasure!"

"No way! The Indiana Jones flick with the guy from Con Air!" Noob gasped.

"It's not an Indiana Jones movie! Well actually it kinda is…" Medic admitted.

"It was better than the last REAL Raiders movie, anyway!" Recon grumbled. "Oh! Disney also made Miracle!"

"WHAT!" Noob shrieked wide-eyed. "The hockey movie with SNAKE PLISKEN!" A large cannon burst behind them before Recon could answer.

"TANK ON OUR SIX! RUN!" Recon cried. Noob scanned back to see the land-ship bearing down on them.

"Limpet out!" he casually dropped his timed explosive at his feet as the whole team ran desperately away from the pursuing armored behemoth. The shadowy heartless tank was closing in when it erupted into flames behind them. "LIMPET TANK KILL!" Noob cheered. Then a most welcome word appeared over his head. "PROMOTED!"

"Good thinking, soldier," Colonel grunted in approval. "Now we need that again!" he finished before stopping to open fire on a mass of heartless. The shadowy soldiers had beaten them to the train station and were dug in like an Alabama tick! Their rifles, machine guns, and snipers sprayed them with a murderous fire. Soldiers were falling left and right and the medics were having trouble reviving them in time. Even medics began to fall. Noob, Simon, Colonel and Recon formed the center of ring of soldiers surrounding the little girl, in whose fate stood the hope of an entire world.

Simon took a bullet to the head just after tossing a grenade with hardly any effect. "Where the hell is Engineer?" Medic growled but was cut off and cut down by a hail of bullets before he could revive the fallen soldier. The girl clung tighter than ever to Noob as more of the men fell, quicker than the others could respawn back into the fight. The wall of brave soldiers between her and creatures of darkness after her was growing thinner by the second.

A hissing burst of fire shot from somewhere on the railroad platform. Flailing heartless soldiers were seen running from a spray of fire, all eventually succumbed to the flames. The enemy reeled around and tried to return fire, but the slow moving armored man was upon them and hosed them with the breath of a dragon. The girl trembled as the lumbering figure slowly slogged toward them. A maniacal laugh echoed through the air, flames seemed to outline and gleam from the man like an infernal halo.

"I'M A GOD!"

"You're actually not," Medic sighed as he reappeared beside Noob.

"WIELDING THE FLAMETHROWER OF JUSTICE!" the girl suddenly recognized the voice of the bearded soldier and could just make out the familiar eyes through the slits in his metal helmet as he approached.

"Oh how did I know he was going to come back with an OP weapon?" Recon sighed.

"YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH ABOUT MY BABY!" Engineer stroked the fuming flamer. "This weapon is perfectly fair and balanced! It's the FOX NEWS OF FUCKING BATTLEFLIELD!"

"Quit wasting time!" Colonel broke in. "Deliver the package to the train!" Noob grabbed the kid and ran for the train, with the others following close behind. Engineer stayed back to ward off the heartless, desperately trying to catch their prize.

"Okay, kid you just hold tight and relax," Noob said as he placed her first train car. She held on to the railing and waited for them to get on with her. But was worried to see them turn their attention to the heartless. The train whistle blew and the locomotive chugged to life, carrying her off without them. She cried out in protest, but the train built up speed and she dared not jump off. The soldier were all too busy firing at the oncoming foe to even wave goodbye. The little match girl felt tears welling up in her eyes just as a blinding flash of brilliant light consumed her.

In the blink of an eye she was no longer on a train speeding through the frozen winter air but in a large room made of stone and filled with strange, shiny equipment. She was immediately greeted by friendly faces. A very old man in blue with a long white beard, a pretty lady in pink and a shorter lady with short black hair. They didn't seem dangerous to her but where was she now? How had she gotten there?

She spun around to see an entire field of glass tubes, filled with men; soldiers. Only these wore different uniforms than the ones who had saved her. With a mechanical hiss, the glass tubes all opened and the soldiers stepped out of their individual capsules. "Hey! There's the girl! She made it!" one of them cheered. She blinked in surprise to see it was the bearded soldier, but in different clothes.

"Hey, kiddo!" said Recon. "Getting the feeling you're not in Russia anymore?"

"WOOOO!" a friendly voice cheered. "You made it kid!" Noob smiled as he approached. The girl's face shone like the sun in recognition and leaped forward to embrace her hero. "WOOO! WE DID IT!" Noob cried as he picked her up on his arm. "WE'RE SAVING LITTLE GIRLS!" Soon the whole room of about three dozen soldiers were cheering and whooping for their first victory over the heartless. After two weeks of waiting and learning while Cid and Merlin put together the whole set up in the castle, they had finally met the heartless in battle and had kicked their assess! And there on Noob's arm, the little match girl cheered with them.


	3. Chapter 3

Merlin strode swiftly through the streets of Radiant Garden, determined to meet King Mickey at the Control Room. He had just received the message, something was wrong, very wrong. He passed the village square, pausing to smile at Noob and Simon surrounded by the village children, including Huey, Dewy, Louie, and the Little Match Girl; "Matches" they all called her. Noob and Simon were good with children and could always make them smile. Merlin blinked in suspicion of what they were doing with Cloud's motorcycle, and Leon's convertible (Leon's sole possession from his world). He thought he heard Noob saying something about "Jeep Stuff"? Merlin shook his head, no time for fun and games.

Mickey and Cid turned to greet Merlin as he entered the Control Room. "It's good to see you, Your Majesty," Merlin said with a bow.

"Thank you, Merlin!" Mickey replied. "Cid told me about the battle the other day! Great thinking from both of you! And please introduce me to those brave men who saved that poor girl! But there's trouble at Disney Town, the Castle is in danger!"

"Is it Organization 13?" Merlin asked.

"No. The heartless are back! I sensed their presence there and have been using my magic to hold it at bay. But I can feel my magic growing weaker! It's as if some kind of force is draining my magic away!"

"Draining magic!" Merlin gasped. That should be all but impossible, but Merlin knew better than to say so. From his studies of in all the worlds of Kingdom Hearts, including those beyond but not out of reach, he knew there was only one creature capable of that, just one.

"I couldn't believe it myself, Merlin," Mickey said. "But it's true, soon I won't be able to hold back the darkness and even my keyblade might not be able to stop what's coming, not while magic is being drained!"

"Not to worry my King. For we have an army that doesn't need…magic…" Merlin said with a wink. There was a burst of inertia as Pluto, Mickey's faithful dog loped past from the door way and sat eagerly in front of Mickey, flicking his tail to and fro. Mickey patted his dog approvingly and gratefully took the letter from his mouth.

"OH NO!" Mickey shrieked. "The heartless are there! With shadow soldiers! They're attacking both the castle and the town! Minnie was hosting a party for all the princesses when they attacked. The castle guards are holding as best they can but many have already been killed!"

"Then there's not a moment to lose!" Merlin grunted. "Cid, sound the alarm, we must mobilize our full force to protect the Castle and the princesses!"

Cid, already at the nearby computer console, shook his head sadly. "Too much interference from the darkness and whatever it is stifling the magic. Won't be able to land the full force in there. Maybe a team of about twelve, be enough to replicate a team death match for them, but not the whole force." Merlin sighed.

"Then look up their rankings and round of the top twelve best. The others will remain on standby. Where are they?"

Cid tapped a button on the console to bring up the security cameras. "Most of them are hanging out in the barracks, some are training in the old battlefield, a few are buying ice cream, and the two morons are…um… Well see for yourself…"

Merlin approached the console to stare in wide-eyed amazement as Noob drove Cloud's motorcycle up to a make-shift ramp, Matches sitting excitedly on his lap. Simon clicked a detonator just as they cleared the ramp, sending them soaring into the air. The blast echoed even to the control room, shaking the castle to its foundations. Merlin was certain he heard a shrill voice screaming "WE'RE FLYING!"

Cid tapped a button to show a camera feed facing the sky. Noob and Matches were now parachuting safely down to the village, another camera showed the motorcycle crashing into the great blue cliffs. Merlin sighed deeply, Cid gave him an understanding nod, he'd be hard at work to fix the bike before Cloud returned.

"In any case, this will be a good opportunity to try something out the boys have been asking for," Cid sighed.

"What's that?" asked Merlin.

[Disney Town]

Minnie Mouse trembled in terror in Disney Town square. Even her best friend Daisy, at her side, could do little to comfort her. The beautiful gazebo in the center had been reduced to rubble, most of the shops and houses were on fire, and the town streets were empty save for the guardsmen scrambling to defend their royalty.

All the other princesses huddled behind Minnie and shivered in fear as black clouds choked the sky and gusts of frigid winds chilled through their beautiful dresses. It almost felt like a blizzard was hitting, though absent the charming, joyful snow. Minnie felt the worst for Pocahontas, Moana, Jasmin, and Meg; whose clothes were intended for much warmer weather.

The princesses and their queen could do nothing but shudder in fear as the royal guards struggled to hold off the oncoming waves of heartless. The little ones were easy enough for them, but those shadowy soldiers had nearly been the death of them as the group made their way to the town square from the castle. So many of the guards had already fallen, some might even return as heartless!

Minnie kicked herself for not being more assertive when Elsa, Anna, and Vanillape insisted on staying behind. Her and the guards had pleaded they come along and warned Elsa that her magic might not be useful for long. But Elsa wouldn't listen and Anna would never leave her side. Vanillape was a well-meaning girl, but she was so impulsive and defiant. When one of the guards asserted himself slightly, the little racer princess only doubled down, as did Elsa. Why did they have to be so stubborn?

Thankfully the eerie, unnaturally cold, wind wasn't the only sound. The town's loudspeaker was still playing the king's beloved marching hymn in defiance of the grim circumstances. Minnie wasn't sure if someone had deliberately left it on to keep their hopes alive or if the speaker control room had simply been abandoned too quickly for the controller to turn it off.

Then another sound joined the unnerving cacophony. A kind of clapping noise that seemed to be growing louder by the second. Another tune became audible in the air, a stark contrast to the upbeat march music. It started with a repeating roll of drums, then went into a guitar solo. Soon a green helicopter appeared, its propellers slicing through the dark clouds like knives. Two more choppers followed it, all three with speakers mounted on the sides, playing the same rock and roll music.

" _Some folks are born, made to wave the flag. Ooh they're red white and blue. And when the band plays hail to the chief, ooh they point the cannon at you. It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son. It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one."_

The choppers landed atop the flattened remains of the gazebo and soldiers in green uniforms leapt out. They ran for the roads guarded by the weakening and terrified royal guards and immediately began opening fire on the heartless with their rifles and machine guns, unheard of in Disney Town. Some of the soldiers turned and ran toward the huddled princesses, who shook nervously as the armed strangers approached. One with a golden eagle on his helmet seemed to be leading the other three.

"Queen Minnie," the leader grunted.

"Yes?" Minnie replied timidly.

"Best get yourself and as many of the princesses as you can into the choppers. They'll fly you to safety at Radiant Garden. Once the choppers return we'll start evacuating the guards with the remaining princesses. My soldiers and I will hold these NANCIES off!" he finished drawing his knife with a grim smirk.

Minnie's eyes bulged in realization. "You must be those soldiers Mickey mentioned!"

"That's right," Colonel replied. "Don't you ladies worry, just leave it to the battlefield professionals." He turned to walk away.

"Wait!" Minnie cried out. The Colonel paused and looked back with a challenging but not callous face. "Three of us are missing! Elsa, Anna, and Vanillape! They went for the roof of the castle, trying to fight the heartless off from the high ground. But magic is being drained! I don't know how long they can last up there!" Again Minnie lamented her new friends' stubbornness which sometimes bordered on childishness.

"Don't worry, we'll find them," Colonel said with confidence. "Now mount up, your highnesses!" he softly barked. "Those choppers can carry at least five each. You three escort the ladies to the choppers then report to the front!"

"Yes, sir! Right away sir!" said one soldier with a dark skin tone and a peace sign on his helmet, he and the other two saluted as Colonel strode toward the enemy brandishing his knife. "Sorry about the Colonel, ma'am, I mean your majesty," said the soldier timidly. "He can come off rough, but it's just his way of showing he cares."

"Is it?" asked a soldier with a thick brown beard.

"Hey, come on dude!" the soldier with glasses chided his teammate.

Medic cut them both off before an argument could break out and the three of them began ushering the princesses to the choppers, warning them to keep low. "Get in ma choppi, bra!" the blonde haired pilot called out, barely audible over the chopping blades. Minnie insisted on Pocahontas, Moana, Jasmin, and Meg getting in first. Snow White went in with them and the chopper's hum grew deafening as it gained altitude and vanished into the darkness. Cinderella, Aurora, Arielle, Belle, and Mulan climbed into the next one. Mulan, Alice, Jane, Rapunzel, and Merida were loaded onto the third. Despite begging and pleading from the girls as well as the soldiers, Minnie insisted on only leaving with the last of wounded. This was still her kingdom and she wouldn't abandon it! She wondered if she had been too hard on Elsa, Anna, and Vanillape.

"Alright, your majesty," said Recon. "But stay close to me, and keep your eyes peeled for danger. I'll be picking the enemy off from afar and spotting," he finished as he knelt down on the slight rise of the gazebo debris then peered down his rifle scope. Engineer rolled his eyes.

"Great! You want me to pitch a tent for the two of you? Maybe build a fire? So you can roast some SMORES!" he roared as he turned to walk sullenly away with Medic.

"Never mind him," Recon said with a sigh. "He doesn't like campers…eh… people who stay in the rear and pick off enemies, just not his playstyle." Minnie and Daisy both nodded awkwardly.

"Take it easy man!" Medic gasped as they made their way to the frontline.

"Come on man! The princesses were always my least favorite part of Disney!" Engineer groaned. "I mean all dreaminess, all the whining, all the whimsy singing, and even the latest bunch are all just plain obnoxious! All that, oh we girls don't need MEN shit! Well let's see how you like us now that an army of demonic shadows are bearing down on you and you need US to come charging in to the rescue! You gonna keep on being a bunch of little Judge Judy BITCHES?!"

"CALM DOWN!" Medic barked. "Save it for the enemy! And maybe be grateful that Cid managed to get 'Bad Company 2 Vietnam' going!" he finished as they reached the line and began firing at the shadowy Vietcong troops charging from the streets. The soldiers roared with bloodlust and fury as the dark commies attacked. Engineer fell to sniper and was immediately revived by Medic. Recon fired at the exposed VC sniper, sending him toppling from the roof of a building. The gunshots ensued for a moment then died down as the enemy fell back to regroup. The choppers returned to load up the royal guards, starting with the wounded. Minnie insisted Daisy go with them and that she would leave with the last of the guards.

An uneasy quiet settled throughout the town, only Minnie and less than ten guardsmen remained waiting for evac. The only sound was the continuing loop of the Mickey Mouse Club March. Engineer began chuckling. Medic rolled his eyes, then stared in confusion that he hadn't picked up some super OP weapon. "What is it?" he asked.

"You know what this is like?" Engineer asked rhetorically. "Full Metal Jacket!" Medic raised an eyebrow. "You know, that famous Vietnam movie with the Gunny as the drill instructor?"

"The Gunny as the drill sergeant?" grimaced the other engineer. "That's not even just ONE MOVIE! That's like half the man's career!"

"Yeah, but Full Metal Jacket is like the BEST!" Engineer broke in. "And he wasn't even my favorite part, it was this shit!"

"The ending march?" another soldier asked.

"Yeah the end!" Engineer replied. "Where after killing the sniper chick they all march off into the sunset singing the Mickey Mouse song that's playing on the loudspeaker!"

"A Vietnam War movie that ends with the Mickey Mouse song?" Medic asked skeptically.

"It's a Kubrick film, man! Don't expect everything to be natural!" Engineer sighed. "Come on guys let's sing it before Charlie comes again! _WHO'S THE LEADER OF THE CLUB THAT'S MADE FOR YOU AND ME?"_ Engineer started loud and proud. To Medic's amazement, most of the others joined in.

" _M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E!_ _MICKEY MOUSE! Mickey Mouse! MICKEY MOUSE! Mickey Mouse! FOREVER LET US HOLD OUR BANNER HIGH! HIGH! HIGH! HIGH! EVERY GIRL AND BOY YOU ARE AS WELCOM AS CAN BE! M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E!"_

Despite himself, Medic found himself joining in. Recon did the same as Minnie gaped in shock at a song about her beloved she had only ever heard the tune of. And the men all sang it with such practiced endearing. Like it had been a huge part of their childhoods.

A sniper shot cracked as one of the soldiers fell, the singing immediately ceased and the front burst into automatic gunfire. Engineer drew a bazooka and fired into an oncoming river of smaller heartless. They burst into liquid fire as the rocket exploded dead center. Engineer's cheer of triumph was cut short by the sniper. Recon zeroed in on the enemy marksman and downed him with a headshot. Medic paused firing long enough to revive Engineer then both joined in spraying the charging VC. The enemy went down by the dozen. Then a heavy waddled up the road. The soldier's eyes widened. They'd never encountered one, but Sora had told them all about them. Big purple bowling balls on lets, who at any point could start rolling at them, a big heavy ball of death! And they were shielded from the front by magic, only vulnerable in the rear. To their visible horror, the round foe knelt and began to roll towards them with startling speed.

"SPLIT!" Medic cried, hoping they'd all get the idea. Thankfully they all figured it out and the soldiers at the middle dodged left and right just in time to avoid being steamrolled as the lumbering purple ball passed. "RECON MOVE!" Medic bellowed. Luckily the heavy had come to a stop right at the edge of the rubble where Recon and Minnie stood, both visibly sighing. Then the heavy sprang back to life and balled its mighty fists. Recon and Minnie stumbled back in horror. Recon nearly fired a shot, then remembered it was impervious from the front.

The sniper and the queen both toppled over on a protruding chunk of debris and stared up helplessly at the lumbering behemoth raising his fists to pummel them. Recon desperately lunged between the queen and the monster when an explosion knocked him flat on top of her, a shower of bubbles fluttered down around them.

Recon apologized as he helped himself and Minnie up. They turned around to see Engineer blowing smoke from the barrel of his bazooka with a blinding smile. "ARE YOU CRAZY?" Recon roared. "YOU COULD HAVE KILLED US!"

"YOU'RE WELCOME!" Engineer snapped. Recon shrugged in disgust at his thoughtlessness. He could have respawned but Minnie wouldn't have. Engineer mockingly mimicked his shrug, sometimes there was just no communicating with him.

The choppers swooped in for the final pick up. The soldiers fell back in good order and Recon carefully picked Minnie up and helped her inside the middle one. The last of the wounded were placed carefully on the floor and the soldiers were careful not to step on them.

"WAIT!" Minnie protested. "Where's your leader? I haven't seen him!" The soldiers looked around, none of them had seen him walk off, or even saw him at the front. But none of them seemed anxious or worried.

"Don't worry, your majesty," said Medic. "Trust me, he can take care of himself."

…

Atop the roof of King Mickey's castle, Elsa was about to collapse. How could her magic be failing her? A disgusting sense of helplessness swept over her as her knees began to buckle. Anna grabbed her and held her up with all her might. "I knew we should have listened to the queen!" Anna sighed.

"Awe! Queen, shween!" Vanillape huffed from the seat of the gummi ship in the middle of the roof. "She'd have just made us to do as all those guardsmen wanted to do!"

"They were only trying to help!" Anna protested. She wished more than ever she had sided with Minnie. She understood both the others had been betrayed by men before, but did they really need to be so stubborn. Not that she was one to talk, and she knew it! Staying in the castle to fight the heartless was the silliest thing she'd done since ridding off into a magic winter without boots or winter clothing. Come to think of it she probably wouldn't have made it without Christoph and Spen. She caught herself wishing she could have thanked them both one more time. But it was no time for that, they had to get out of there, and now that gummi ship was their last chance.

Vanillape fiddled with a few more wires and the ship came to life with a roar. The little girl clapped and cheered her victory and waved the two sisters to climb aboard. The gummi ship took off as a thick fog of blackness enveloped the entire castle and the outlying town. Suddenly there was nothing but a lifeless back void outside the ship. The three princesses fought hard to mask their terror.

Bolts of lightning struck the ship as a heartless gummi ship flew in for the kill. Vanillape began tapping buttons at random, looking for the weapons and defensive measures, but to no avail. Bolts of dark energy tor into the hull of the ship, the engine burst into flames. The girls clutched each other in wide-eyed horror, certain this was how it would end.

To the shock of all, a soldier flew, seemingly out of nowhere, into the side of the heartless ship. They watched as he hacked and slashed viciously at the ship's engine with his knife, soon the engine was burning worse than theirs was and the soldier leapt for their ship, landing on their windshield just as the heartless ship exploded. His grim face was very calm, almost indifferent.

"Got room for one more?" he asked. The three princesses blinked in surprise as he casually opened the side hatch and climbed inside.

"Yes," Anna answered. "But I don't think we'll last much longer!"

"WE'RE CRASHING!" Vanillape shrieked as the ship began to fall deeper into the black void.

"Just point this bird at that light," the soldier with the eagle on his helmet said, look calm as if he were at home in bed. Vanillape noticed a faint light shining in the distance and angled the ship towards it, but it was falling fast. A barren wasteland came into view from the lights of the ship as they began to plummet earthward. "Alright, let's bail! All three of you grab on to me and hold on tight!" he grunted, all three of them did as they were told and clung desperately to him as he leapt from the ship. Seconds later the gummi ship exploded on the rocky surface. Colonel and the princesses parachuted softly to the ground.

A quick look around and they all realized the darkness was closing in on them again. Vanillape was too shocked to object when the soldier picked her up onto his shoulders before grabbing the other two by their arms and dragging them toward the distant light at a dead run. "Alright, just run for it," he ordered. The two sisters panted for breath as he dragged them, neither dared complain and both kicked their high heels off as they ran.

"We're never going to make it!" Elsa gasped, on the verge of collapsing.

"Just run your asses off," Colonel grunted.

"Oh, no!" Vanillape shrieked as the darkness swept over them like a tidal wave. There was only darkness. A vacuum of death and despair, where not light nor hope could exist. A brilliant light shone in the darkness with the force of the sun. There stood the Colonel, shining in glory, with the sisters collapsed on both shoulders and Vanillape sulking unconscious on the back of his neck.

"I AM BATTLEFIELD!" he growled with vicious triumph before darting through the blackness at lightning speed. The distance between them and the light closed in seconds and with another brilliant blast, the three of them were standing safely before the Radiant Garden fountain, overlooking the vast field.

He eased the awakening princesses down, all three coughed with bulged eyes, as if they had stopped breathing. "What happened?" Elsa asked as she wobbled to her feet, Anna was too dizzy to help her.

"The darkness had us!" Vanillape gasped. "YOU SAVED US!" she beamed up at Colonel, whose eyes widened slightly as he drew his knife and spun around.

"Don't thank me just yet," he said as his face hardened to meet the lone heartless gummi ship that had followed them through the void. The princesses shrank back and toppled over in dizziness and fear as the ship bore down on them. The four of them stared in amazement as an old-looking, roofless car soared into the oncoming ship just as it came within range. The ship and the car both exploded in a blazing inferno. Their amazement grew as a lone soldier with glasses parachuted down with three young ducks strapped to his uniform.

"WOOO-HOOO!" the soldier whooped as he and his feathered friends slowly descended to the ground.

"WAKA-ROODY!" all three young ducks gasped as they touched ground gently.

"WASN'T THAT AWESOME?" the soldier cheered.

"SURE WAS, UNCA SIMON!" the boys chimed together.

"WE'RE BLOWING SHIT UP!" Simon roared as they rushed off down the road into the town, completely ignoring the four amazed figures staring after them.


	4. Chapter 4

Madame Medusa stormed through the airport terminal, not even bothering to put up a façade of politeness as she snatched her ticket and pushed and shoved her way past other customers. She had gone to a lot of trouble to find the Devil's Eye, the largest diamond ever struck from the earth, and she wasn't going to let that chubby fool Snoops ruin everything!

She fumed especially for that ungrateful little brat, Penny. Snoops had caught her sending out messages in bottles, begging for help. Of course there was little, if any chance of it ever being found, but if it was… Medusa shook the absurd idea from her head as she boarded the plane, mercifully short on passengers.

The airplane engines began to hum and she tapped her elbows anxiously, waiting for movement. Time was money and Snoops and Penny had already been down there in that smelling cesspit, aptly named Devil's Bayou, for three months! The Devil's Eye was her business's last best hope for something more than just scraping a meager existence in the bowels of New York City. She would get it if it were the last thing she ever did!

"You really want it that badly don't you?" a deep voice whispered in Medusa's ear. She turned and gasped in shock at a man who wasn't in the chair a second ago. He was tall, and painfully thin. His skin was smooth, but tightly stretched. Long jet-black hair hung down past his shoulders and down his sleek, slender frame. If not for the deep, gravelly voice, Medusa might have mistaken him for a woman. Even his long black robes seemed effeminate.

"That diamond, Ms. Medusa," he went on. "You really want it so bad as to go through all this trouble. Even to kidnap a child and coax her into service with the false promise of freedom and a bright future."

Medusa's eyes bulged. There was no noticeable condemnation in his voice, but somehow he knew everything! The flabbergasted woman gapped and soundlessly mouthed words of astonished denial. What did he want with her? Would he demand a share of the diamond?

The man in black gave a smirk that made Medusa's blood freeze. "Worry not, Madame. I have no interest in your diamond, or your methods of getting it. In fact I find it very cleaver, a child with no future, young and impressionable, easily intimidated. A delightfully underhanded scheme," the stranger whispered on, though Medusa heard every word loud and clear.

"Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Cobb. And I have a business proposition for you," he said.

"I'm listening," Medusa gulped.

"As I said, I have no interest in the diamond you seek. But the girl in your possession," he paused to lean closer to her face. His eyes locked with hers in a hypnotic stare. "It is Penny I seek, for purposes that are my mine alone. She will find your diamond soon and when she does you will hand her over to me. And in exchange I have means to make your entire venture run much more smoothly. Outside forces will try to take the girl away from you, and that fat friend of yours and your pet reptiles will not be enough to stop them. Give me your word that you will hand the girl over to me, and when this transport arrives at your destination, you will find armed men waiting for you. They will obey you as they would a master. And they will also have transportation that will make your travels through the swamps much more convenient. Have we an agreement?" he finished, slowly holding out his hand for her.

It was so much to take in, but after a moment in thought Medusa smiled awkwardly as she shook his hand. She didn't know what this strange benefactor wanted with Penny, nor did she care. All she wanted was the diamond. Once the little brat had delivered it from the ancient pirate's cave Mr. Cobb could do whatever he wanted with her or to her.

"How nice," Cobb remarked after abruptly letting go of Medusa's hand. "A woman who knows not to tax my patience!" he said with a surprised grin. "The men will be waiting for you, don't forget our agreement, Madame Medusa. And don't disappoint me…" he finished.

Medusa smiled and nodded in compliance when the plane lurched forward to take off. She blinked in surprise that she had barely noticed the plane moving into position. Then her eyes nearly shot from her skull as she turned her head to find Mr. Cobb had vanished.

…

Bernard signed deeply as he and Bianca watched helplessly as Penny was dragged back to the long abandoned steamboat wreck. The hoodlums were rude, coarse, and brutal. He wasn't sure which frightened him more, the hoods or Nero and Brutus (Medusa's pet alligators). It had hardly been a challenge to sneak past the armed guards to make contact with Penny the day before, but getting her out would be just short of impossible now.

Even as the three of them had put their heads together the night before, they couldn't come up with a plan to get away from the armed guards. If it were just the gators, Medusa, and Snoops, the entire thing would have been much easier. They could have trapped the gators in the ships elevator, set off Snoops fireworks as a distraction and fired up Medusa's swamp mobile to escape. But now it seemed their rescue attempt had been in vain.

The armed guards rode their own swamp mobiles in constant patrols around the wrecked ship. And they kept a keen eye on Penny, cursing and shouting her back into her room if she even so much as stared too long out at the horizon. Some of the words they used around that poor girl made Bernard want to sink his teeth into their ankles! What's more something seemed unnatural about them, some dark haze seemed to cling to them at all times and their eyes had a hint of yellow light.

"Oh Bernard!" Bianca sighed in defeat. "Whatever will we do? That poor little girl!" The million dollar question and Bernard had no answer for her.

"Just sit back and relax, because the cavalry has arrived!" a friendly voice announced behind the two mice. Both turned around to stare up in shocked at a smiling human police officer. Though his weapon, helmet and equipment were more akin to the battlefield than police work. Bernard and Bianca turned to each other in question. What should they do? A human had seen and heard them!

"Over here, guys, I found them!" the officer called. Two more policemen sauntered up.

"Oh! Bernard and Bianca!" one of them in a ski mask said in recognition, both mice blinked in confusion. "Don't worry, we know you're with the Rescue Agent Society, and we're here to help."

"There's no time to explain," said the black one with a white cross indicating first aid on his uniform. "I'm Medic, these are Recon, and Noob," he introduced his squad mates, who waved casually. "More squads are moving in to encircle the ship, then we'll strike and rescue Penny, then we'll grab a swamp mobile and get her and you out of here!"

"There is one more of us coming, though," said Recon. "Just try not to let him spook you, he's harmless… To us anyway…"

"Wait, he's not going to?" Medic began but was cut off by a maniacal laugh that seemed to emanate bolts of lightning. Bernard and Bianca clutched each other nervously as a bearded police officer approached holding a rocket launcher.

"He is," Recon answered.

"AH, HA, HA, I'M A GOD!" Engineer cheered his own glory.

"No you're not," Medic sighed.

"FOR I WIELD THE RPG OF JUSTICE!" Engineer went on.

"Say it a little louder, I don't think they heard you at the wreck!" Recon grunted.

"Chill out guys, once the other squads are in position things are gonna get plenty loud, then I get to use this little baby!" he giggled giddily.

"No, don't do it!" Recon gasped.

"You might hurt Penny!" Medic cut Engineer off before he could object. "We've been over this before, just because we can't team kill it doesn't mean NPCs are immune to explosions!"

"But they've got vehicles!"

"We need to take at least one swamp mobile intact to get Penny to safety!"

"Hey guys!" another soldier ran up. "Level Cap and the Colonel are in position! But we're missing that freaking blueberry!" Ammo Guy frantically explained. "Seen him?"

"Who?... Blueberry?" Noob scratched his head!"

"He means SIMON!" Engineer bellowed.

"Oh!..." Noob gasped in realization, causing his three squadmates to roll their eyes. "No haven't seen him since we left the Garden."

"Well get him on the radio or something!" Ammo Guy demanded. "I'm itching to use this baby!" he said as he unslung his own RPG!

"Oh dammit!" Recon sighed.

"You too!" Medic grumbled.

"SEE! Told you!" Engineer growled. "You do NOT want to play Hardline without an RPG!"

"Never mind that!" Medic broke in. "Right now we need to find Simon. Everyone needs to be in position, if one thing goes wrong this whole plan is a scrap! If one person charges in there."

"Oh no!" Ammo Guy cut him off. "There's no freaking way anyone is dumb enough to just charge in there now!" The faint rumble of a swamp mobile echoed.

"Oh shit! The Heartless must have sent out a patrol!" Medic gasped.

"WHERE IS IT?" Engineer and Ammo Guy both demanded in unison, bringing their RPGs to the ready. They argued over who should get the first shot once the enemy came into view, eventually settling on first to spot it. Medic tried to defuse them, urging them to keep quiet and let it pass, buying them time to find Simon. As if on cue, the Swamp mobile emerged out into the bayou, making a b-line for the wrecked river boat.

"JIHAD SWAMPMOBILE!" Simon's voice carried as he sped by. The soldiers and the mice watched with dropped jaws as Simon bailed out before the vehicle struck the side of the boat, in the middle of all the enemy's parked swamp mobiles. Moments later the faint click of a detonator was followed by a deafening explosion, sending all the swamp mobiles and half the river boat up in a blazing inferno.

"Oh my god!" Recon gasped.

"Did he just?" Medic asked in shock.

"Yes he did!" Engineer answered.

"Okay, everyone stick to the plane! Stick to the plan!" Medic insisted over the radio, trying to rein in the chaos. Ammo Guy and Engineer both fired their RPGs in unison and cheered with glee at the resulting explosions. "Oh dammit! Attack, everyone attack!" Medic barked over the radio. Noob opened up on the scrambling enemy with his habitual chattering to the beat of his LMG.

"YEAH!" Noob cheered. "LET'S SAVE ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL!" The rest of the squad roared to life as they pelted the Heartless criminals with lead. At the opposite end of the bayou, the squads under the command of Level Cap and Colonel followed suit. Enemy snipers moved fast, made it to the upper levels of the boat and started picking them off. Medic soon had his hands full reviving squad mates. Recon kept to cover, picking off the enemy snipers. Engineer crouched nearby and fired his RPG at one sniper hiding in one of the upper rooms. The blast of the RPG was compounded by the sporadic blasts of fireworks. Engineer blinked in surprised, then remembered this movie from his childhood; the fat creepy guy with the glasses kept fireworks to light up the swamp when the little girl tried to run away.

When the last of the snipers went down, Colonel led the charge, hopping on a swamp mobile and gunning the engine towards the boat. Medic knelt to let Bernard and Bianca climb onto his shoulder before doing the same with his squad.

…

Penny scampered helplessly through corridors of the boat, holding tight to her teddy bear. The extra weight of the stuffed animal and the alien hardness inside it was of little concern to her. She had managed to snatch her favorite toy away from Medusa and duck away while the fireworks wreaked havoc. Partially because the initial blast had knocked Medusa and Snoops off their feet. Bullets and rockets filled the air, thankfully the scary, shadowy adults with weird voices were too busy firing back at the attacks to notice her.

The horrible screeching voice of Medusa echoed over the cacophony, driving her on through the narrow, often shattered, walkways of the wrecked boat. Fired blazing throughout blocked her path, causing her to double back and nearly wander right into the crazed, shotgun-wielding Medusa. Penny reached the main deck and made a dash for the side, maybe she could make a run for it. She hoped the water wasn't too deep.

The terrified girl came to a sudden stop as the hungry eyes of Nero and Brutus locked with hers. Medusa's pet alligators were blocking her way. Freezing a moment in terror, she turned to run away, suddenly a strong hand grabbed her arm. "This way, kid!" a friendly voice said. She looked up in surprise at a police man wearing a helmet dragged her into the nearby cage-elevator. She trembled in terror to be caught in the very trap she had intended for Nero and Brutus.

"Okay, Gators, you have the right to remain SILENT!" the police man screamed as he frantically fired his machinegun. Penny plugged her ears, but blinked in surprise that none of the bullets were hitting the oncoming alligators. Unplugging her ears she also noticed the policeman was chattering to his own gunshots. Eventually his gun clicked dry and he casually went about reloading, as if completely oblivious to the flesh-eating reptiles closing in. Penny clung desperately to the policeman's pant leg as Nero and Brutus charged with fury. The frightened girl recoiled in shock as the two gators exploded just as they reached the elevator, nothing remained of them but a red splatter.

"Oh yeah, that's right," the policeman said, unfazed. "I'm a Claymore Master!"

"Wow!" several other policemen gasped from the deck.

"Good one, Noob!" said a bearded one.

"Yeah, I know! That one took forever though!" the other policemen grimaced in confusion. "I laid like a hundred claymores all over the deck. I'm surprised just those last two got them." The others collectively sighed in disappointment.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's notes: Hey everyone sorry that last one was so short and so far between. I'll try to keep them coming. Enjoy!

Madame Medusa whimpered in despair as she clung desperately to the tree. Snoops' laughter echoed as he rafted across the bayou. Penny was gone, and with her the precious diamond; her last chance at the high life. Even her beloved pets Nero and Brutus were gone, blown to bits by those meddling policemen! She had watched helplessly as they mounted their own swamp mobiles, Penny clinging to her savior as they rode off into the horizon.

With Medusa's pets gone, there was no telling what was below the water. She had barely summoned the courage to swim as far as the tree. Now she held on for dear life. "Madame Medusa," the soft gravely whisper of her mysterious airplane visitor echoed from nowhere. She gazed around in horror. "You have failed me." She looked down to see him at the foot of the tree, her eyes widened, he was standing ON the water, like it was ice; impossible in the tropical heat! "Women forever tax my patience," he growled.

Cobb raised his hand and tightened his fingers into a fist, grasping some unseen object with sadistic glee. Instantly Medusa's heart froze, an invisible hand stopping her heart mid-beat. With an agonized gasp she clasped her chest and fell to the muddy water below. She wretched and wailed all the way to the bottom of the bayou, her agony bubbling up to the surface. Cobb smirked with dark delight as the bubbling stopped, stagnant stillness restored to the swamp.

"Time to strike closer to home," Cobb said thoughtfully as he turned to stride away from the remains of his discarded asset. Such a greedy, spiteful woman turned out to be a bad investment after all.

…

Sora burst through Merlin's front door. "I came as soon as I heard!" he gasped breathlessly. Donald and Goofy followed after. "What's happened to Pooh? And the others? Are they alright?"

"Calm down, Sora!" Merlin said. "The soldiers have everything under control." The wizard clenched his eyes shut in disgust as his statement was followed by several tiny bursts of fire and smoke from the pages of the open book on his table. A four legged camera-like contraption standing over it, projecting the Battlefield simulation into the book. Sora gasped in horror.

"Please Sora, that's been going on since the start of this."

"How did they get past the defense system?" Sora asked, almost demanding. It had come as such a shock to him. A lone heartless circumnavigating the Radiant Garden defense grid to barge into Merlin's house and squeeze a drop of magic ink into the book, into the Hundred Acre Wood. Sora had not been this terrified since the day they nearly stole the book. He would do anything to protect Pooh and the others.

"Cid and the others are working to uncover the crack in our armor now," Merlin said. "Our soldiers are doing everything they can. Now it's just a matter of time. Once they have captured all the objectives, the heartless will be gone." Sora clenched his fists.

"They'll have help," he grunted before charging straight at the book. He refused to hear Merlin's shout of objection. Determined to rescue his friend of very little brain.

…

"YEAH!" Ammo Guy roared as he unloaded his SMG across the river. The small wooden bridge nearby long since blown to bits. His loyal friend Choppy fired alongside him. Like most of the soldiers, they grew up watching and adoring the inhabitants of this forest. The beloved characters being in danger sparked a protective passion in all of them, though many refused to admit it. Even the Colonel seemed more worked up than ever.

Coming in fresh from their venture at Devil's Bayou, they were still outfitted as police officers. Recon made no objection, perched atop the large tree with the swing, overlooking the remains of the bridge. He picked off one Heartless criminal after another, one of his better kill streaks. At the foot of the hill, Ammo Guy and Choppy lobbed grenades at a squad of Heartless firing furiously from the opposite bank. To both their surprise, an orange and black streak caught the grenades in air with a metallic springing noise.

"Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" a familiar laugh echoed as the little stuffed tiger soared down to them. "Don't worry!" Tigger proudly announced. "I saved your little green balls! TIGGER TO THE RESCUE!" he dropped the grenades at their feet and bounced away with his habitual laugh.

"WE THREW THEM ON PURPOSE YOU DUMB DICKWAD!" Ammo Guy roared moments before obliteration in the resulting explosions.

"Oh come on, Tigger!" Recon sighed. The bouncy tiger bounced on, oblivious the harm he had done to the very men trying to protect him. Only half aware of the hail of bullets zipping past him. With a string of curses, Ammo Guy and Choppy both respawned on Recon and went back to blasting away at the enemy.

Meanwhile Rabbit's house was designated objective A, and firmly occupied by the Heartless. Bullets ripped and tore through the garden. Grenades burst sizzling holes throughout the crops, sending dirt, roots, and vegetables flying. Rabbit stood frozen in horror at the destruction of a year's work. Medic, once again shoved him back down out of the path of sniper fire. But he stubbornly stood up again and again, entranced in shocked misery.

"Leave him, he's dead to the world!" Engineer growled before spraying his SMG.

"We can't just let him die!" Medic snapped.

"Well he's stuffed anyway! We'll just get that Kanga chick to sew him up!"

"Did you even see the new movie last summer?" Medic demanded. "Rabbit and Owl are REAL animals! It's the OTHERS that are stuffed!"

"See a live-action Winnie the Pooh movie starring crappy-prequel Obi Won Kenobi? Seriously? Did ANYONE watch that movie?"

"Lots of people did!" Medic roared. "It got nominated for an OSCAR!"

"A Winnie the Pooh movie got nominated for an Oscar! No way!" Engineer snorted. "How the hell does that happen?"

"By including a World War Two battle scene, that's how!"

"WHAT?" Engineer demanded, pausing in disbelief. "Who the hell puts a WW2 sequence in a Winnie the Pooh movie? Dammit Disney! First they make Maleficent a wimpy emo 'good guy' and now this! WORLD WAR TWO HAS NO BUSINESS IN POOH BEAR FLICK!

"Well it worked! It was just at the beginning!"

"It's the principle of the thing!" Engineer insisted. "Pooh is charming and innocent, and is meant to be wholesome and containing simple life messages! And the writer who made it, was a WW1 vet who wanted NOTHING to do with all that shit!" Medic rolled his eyes. Thankfully a sniper's bullet to the head cut Engineer off from his tangent. Medic sighed a moment before reviving him.

"Okay we need to take out those snipes!" Engineer said. Medic nodded, grateful he was back on task.

"They're up in the tree limbs and inside the house," Medic pointed out.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Engineer said with a menacing smile.

"NO!" Medic gasped. To his horror, Engineer pulled out his RPG.

"This is happening buddy," the psychotic glee was forming in Engineers eyes, Medic felt the unyielding pull take hold of him too. Before he could think better of it, Medic drew his pistol, and shot himself. Moments later he reappeared beside Engineer as an engineer, RPG in hand. Both took aim with crazed smiles and laughed like madmen as they fired at Rabbit's house again and again. Within moments the hollowed out tree was a smoking ruin.

Medic and Engineer both strode up to the charred remains of the partially subterranean treehouse, cackling with maddened glee. The A in the sky gradually turned blue. With a burst of interdimensional momentum, Sora appeared in front of them.

"HEY! SORA!" Both cheered.

"Guys!" Sora gasped, pausing in wide-eyed shock at his surroundings. "OH NO! Where's Rabbit?"

"Oh he's fine!..." both soldiers replied in unison, barely containing their psychotic laughter at the carnage they had wrought.

"He's over there in the tree-line, had a bit of a shock is all, but he'll be fine! Trust me, I'm a medic…" Sora grimaced at the wild look in Medic's eyes. Then he noticed the RPGs in their hands.

"What have you done!" he gasped in realization. "You've destroyed Rabbit's house!"

"Hey! We saved it!" Engineer snapped.

"Yeah, the Heartless had taken it over and were shooting at us, we just liberated it from them!"

"How is blowing it up SAVING IT!" Sora demanded.

"Because it…gets rid of the Heartless…" Medic slowly replied, Engineer heartily agreed.

"Why couldn't you just…like snipe them or something?"

"We…we're…not snipers…" Medic answered hesitantly.

"But then we wouldn't get to use the RPGs!" Engineer objected.

"I thought you said they were way too OP in Hardline!" Sora harkened back to one of their many conversations about the game series they all loved. Medic and Engineer both began vigorously denying the overpowered nature of the weapon.

"Well maybe it is just a little bit…" Medic hesitantly began to admit.

"It's a little OP," Engineer mildly conceded. "L.O.P."

"Then don't you think blowing up Rabbit's house was over doing it?"

"Well of course, but we don't care. Because we blew stuff up with it and we got the objective." Engineer replied calmly with a broad smile. "Can't you see, we are gods with these things! We can control day…and night…" Sora rolled his eyes.

"Come on, you can't possibly control day and," Sora was cut off by the both RPGs firing up towards the sun. A few seconds later the world was cast into the darkness of night, the only light from the stars and the moon, shiny blue words appeared in the air reading SUN DISABLED. Sora stood dumbfounded as Medic and Engineer laughed madly. Increasingly wary of the destructive madness that the gamers admitted occasionally overtook them, he slowly edged away from them before turning to go check on Rabbit in the direction they pointed. Soon the hum of a chopper was heard bearing down on them. Engineer and Medic paused their frenzied laughter to shoot it down together before continuing to laugh. Sora hoped they'd snap out of it soon as he scooped the unconscious Rabbit up in his arms.

…

"GET THE MUTHAFLUKLUS!" a heartless criminal barked. His squad mate fired his RPG at Tigger and Roo as they bounced from tree stump to tree stump, cheering with glee as the burst of the explosion sent them flying even higher. "MUTHAFLUKLA! You missed them again!" the heartless grumbled.

"Well you Muthafluklin try it, Muthaflukla!"

"Fine then, Muthaflukla!" the heartless unslung his own RPG, moved to the edge of the cliff overlooking the "Bouncing Grounds" and fired. Again the RPG hit the stump too late to harm Tigger and Roo, only sending them soaring higher, prompting their excited cries.

"You can't hit them either, Muthaflukla!"

"Well let me muthafluklin try, Muthafluklus!" another squad mate came to join them, RPG at the ready.

"Why don't you try sniping them instead, Muthaflukla?"

"I can't muthafluklin snipe, I'm an engineer, Muthaflukla!"

"Now we can't ALL be muthafluklin RPGing, Muthafluklus!"

"Muthaflukla!"

"RPGs are for NANCIES!" A throaty voice grunted behind them. The heartless turned only to be downed in mere seconds, knifed in the throats by the Colonel, who huffed a triumphant laugh as his killstreak climbed ever higher. Tigger and Roo landed on a tree top nearby, oblivious to the violence that had just taken place.

"Hey! Why don't you come and bounce with us?" Tigger called. "I don't see a tail, but you might have the feet for it!"

"Tails and feet are for Nancies!" Colonel growled as he snatched up an RPG and fired at his feet. He rocketed up into the night sky, eventually popping his parachute. Tigger and Roo gazed up in amazement. "GTFO YOU TWO!" C olonel bellowed down to them. "FIND SOMEWHERE TO HIDE!"

…

Sora panted for breath as he jogged up to Medic and Engineer, who seemed to finally have gotten ahold of themselves. It had been over an hour since he arrived in the Hundred Acre Wood, which deserved its' name. He had been running from one end of the forest to the next, battling heartless and gathering up Pooh and the others. Once he finally had them all together at Pooh's house, the heartless showed up in force. He had held them off, giving Pooh and the gang time to run for safety. He hoped they stayed together this time.

"Well we finally have things secured here," Medic said. "Does Level Cap have Pooh's house secure?" Sora nodded. "Good, Gamer Girl and her squad moved in to defend Rabbit's house after we moved here. Where's Pooh and the others?"

"I had them all together at Pooh's house but now I can't find them," Sora answered, finally catching his breath. Engineer pressed his radio and asked if anyone had seen their VIPs, all sounded of in the negative. "What about Noob and Simon, I didn't hear them?"

"They're probably roasting some SMORES with them as we speak," Engineer growled before calling the two of them up on the radio. "What are you idiots doing?" he snapped.

"We're over at Dracula, saving the day!" Noob replied. Engineer rolled his eyes then took a glance at the scoreboard, his eyes widened.

"Wow! You guys are actually doing pretty good, you actually have kills in the double digits!" Engineer gasped in disbelief.

"Yep, we're throwing grenades, getting kills! GRENADE OUT!" Noob replied. Engineer and Medic both seethed with anger.

"Dammit! They're doing it again!" Medic sneered.

"They're Spamming again! You FREAKING CAMPING BITCHES!" Engineer roared into the radio.

"IT'S A LEGITIMATE STRATEGY!" Noob shouted in shrill reply.

"Hey there, everyone!" an unmistakable voice chimed into the frequency.

"Tigger!" Sora cried out in recognition.

"Tigger! Where are you?" Engineer demanded. "Where's everyone else?"

"We're all right here, of course!"

"And where the hell is 'right here'?" Engineer growled, losing his patience.

"Just a little northwest of over there!" Tigger replied.

"JUST TELL US WHERE YOU ARE!"

"At the hiding place of course! Sora told us to go hide, then we found this radio!" a sudden impact was heard, followed by a burst and the crackling of flames. "FIRE! FIRE! WE'RE BURNING!" Tigger wailed, his voice joined by Pooh's and the others'.

"NO!" Sora cried.

"SHIT!" Engineer hissed.

"Everyone keep your eyes peeled for fire!" Medic snapped over the radio. "The VIPs are in danger!"

"Sora! Where's this hiding place?" Sora grappled control over his frantic mind, forcing himself to ignore the agonizing cries of his friends.

"THE MARSH! The muddy area to the southwest!" Sora cried. Engineer pulled up the map, then paused a moment, Pooh and the gang still wailing in the background.

"DAMMIT!" Engineer growled. "Tigger, what color is the fire?"

"BLUE! THE WORSTEST WORST KIND!"

"Tigger, blue fire is FRIENDLY FIRE! It WON'T hurt you!" In an instant the screaming stopped.

"Oh!" Tigger calmly sighed. "Why it's the friendliestest fire I've ever seen! So it wants to be friends does it? Well then I'll just BOUNCE IT!" a thunk announced Tigger dropping the radio, his springy tail sounding over the frequency as he playfully attacked the blue flames. Engineer sighed, pause to wonder if he should tell Noob to stop throwing incendiaries, then thought better of it.

…

Cobb strode casually into the Horned King's throne room. The mercenaries and his filthy goblin stooge had left their master to his solitude. "The time has come to strike, Horned one," Cobb said.

"Mind yourself, Necromancer!" the Horned King spat. "Remember whose castle this is." Cobb giggled that a man equally obsessed with immortality as he should speak of his craft with such disdain.

"We share a common goal, My King," Cobb said soothingly. "We have combined our forces to that end, I'm merely saying it is time move ahead with our offensive. Those meddling keyblade wielders and those silly soldiers are busy fighting over that worthless child's book. We must strike deep and fast."

"Have you located the witch yet?" the Horned King cut him off.

"She is a clever one," Cobb explained. "She also has a much cooler head than your majesty, this can be quite useful, plus the tools at her disposal make her all the more difficult to track."

"Spare me your petty criticism!" snapped the skeletal king. "Even if we can gather the maidens of virtue, it will all be for naught without the beaked wand, and the vortex of plenty. She is the only witch to have crafted a portal capable of summoning an infinite amount of desired objects, the same base-spell the black cauldron uses to summon the army of the dead! With it we can duplicate the cauldron and summon the army of the dead in two different locations!"

Cobb maintained his composure as the Horned King's rant came to an end. "Of course, my king. Surely you don't think I need to be reminded of this."

"Then find me the witch!" demanded the king. "I will dispatch the heartless. Once those blundering fools leave to handle them, Radiant Garden will be lightly defended, I will dispatch both our mercenary forces to retrieve the girls already there. You must hurry and find the witch!"

"It is only a matter of time," Cobb smirked. "With all of King Mickey's correspondence in my possession, I will now be able to see just how many other magicians the mouse king has consulted. One of them is certain to know her location."

"Then be done with it!" the Horned King snapped. "Have you at least found any useful information about her?"

"Only that she has a special love of children," Cobb replied with a dark giggle as he turned to exit the chamber.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's notes: Okay everyone, it's time to crank things up a notch. I hope you all are still following this because horizons are about to be expanded, some of the worlds to come may not technically be "Disney" but the mouse's logo is on their American license so tough luck. LOL! Enjoy!

Sora swung his keyblade into the snarling face of the dog, shrouded in the darkness of its owner's heart. It fell limp to the electrified subway rails below. He spun around to deflect another hail of bullets fired from the driver's seat. Sora struggled to keep his balance on the back hood of the convertible. The same two Doberman dogs appeared out of a dark mist and sprang to attack. The gangster's pistol clicked dry and the dogs attacked. Sora could only knock one of them aside, the other pinned him down. He barely had time to bring up his sword to keep the heartless-dog from tearing his throat out.

This mission had gone less than smoothly. Sora, Donald, and Goofy appeared in some run-down second of a city's dock, where they witnessed a little girl being kidnapped by a man in a black convertible. The homeless man who tried to intervene was knocked away by the driver and left beaten on the road, a horde of dogs chased after the car.

Sora and his friends helped the homeless man up and asked him what had happened. What followed was a barely understandable, frantic, and babbling of idiocy. But Sora read between the lines; the homeless man was being extorted by a low-life thug, he was told to bring "the money" in three days, but coming up short he desperately tried to lure the wealthy owner of a cat to the docks in exchange for "the money", apparently he didn't even know the exact amount he owed the loan shark, homeless people like him make an easy target for a thug. Go figure, the cat's owner turned out to be a little girl whose parents were out of town on business. The poor girl arrived with her piggy bank to pay the ransom (much to Donald's disgust that the illiterate bum didn't even specify the amount for the ransom), he returned the cat to her without accepting her money. The gangster, watching from nearby leapt at the opportunity to kidnap and hold the girl for her well-to-do parents to ransom.

Realizing the situation, Sora and the others eagerly resolved to rescue the child. The homeless man, knowing where the gangster would take her, drove them on his motor scooter to bowls of the subway system. They busted in just in time to rescue the girl, the dogs, and her cat from the hoodlum and his canine cohorts. Donald and Goofy dispatched the dogs with ease. Sora, thoroughly enraged at the villain, deflected the gunshots from his bullets and swung the keyblade into the gangsters head with full force.

The kidnapper fell to the floor with a faint crack. Before Sora could say a word, a deep, gravely chuckle echoed through the room. Everyone gazed around in shocked wonder. The little girl shrieked, gazing upward at a tall, slender man in black, floating in the air and holding a staff with a blue glowing crystal on top. The dogs all tensed, but seemed as frightened as the girl.

"WHO ARE YOU?" Sora demanded. "Are you from the Organization?... The Heartless?" Again the man in black chuckled, but gave no answer. His staff shone a blinding blue and was gone. Moments later the same blue shown from the chests of the downed gangster and his dogs. An inky blackness enveloped them. They arose drenched in darkness, their eyes blazing an unholy yellow.

"GET ON THE BIKE! LET'S GO!" the homeless man cried. Even Sora, Donald, and Goofy leapt upon the overcrowded scooter and held on for dear life as the bum gunned the engine out the narrow corridor into the service hall. The shadowy hoodlum and his dogs in hot pursuit.

It wasn't long before the gangster had mounted his convertible and raced after them. Even chasing them onto the tracks of the subway itself. Now as Sora regretted jumping from the scooter to attack the gangster head-on. The heartless dog snarled as its shadowy fangs chomped closer to his neck. The gangster gunned the engine, the front hood crept closer to the scooter.

"WOOOOOOOO!" A familiar voice cried over the roar of the car engine and the rumble of what sounded like another scooter. Sora's eyes widened at Engineer gunning a quadbike straight at the car from behind. The crazed eyes, the sadistic smile…

The car erupted into flames at the moment of impact. Sora flew through the air amid the scattered burning fragments. He landed with a hard thud on the maintenance walk beside the track. Struggling painfully to his feet, Sora moaned. Donald and Goofy were at his side in an instant, the duck wizard cast a cura spell and Sora felt much better.

"WOOOOOO!" Engineer cheered with a mad cackle as his quadbike came to a stop beside them on the track. "THAT WAS AWESOME WASN'T' IT?"

"HEY! WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?" Donald demanded, then quacked at the top of his lungs in a fit of rage as Engineer mimicked his voice almost exactly. Sora and Goofy desperately tried to muffle their own giggles.

"Seriously though!" Sora broke in, wiping the smile from his face. "I could have been killed! And how did you do that? You didn't fire a rocket or anything!"

"A slam-trap," Medic sighed, he and Recon strode up from behind. "It's a glitch in Battlefield 4. If a friendly soldier puts his Slams on your vehicle and you ram an enemy vehicle, the friendly fire protection keeps you from getting hurt in the explosion that destroys the enemy."

"YEAH! Isn't it great?" Engineer giggled. "Hey how about if one of you kills himself and comes back as an engineer and slap some slams on me?"

"How about no?" Medic replied.

"Come on you guys, let's do this!" Engineer pleaded.

"Let's don't and say we did," Recon begged. Machine gun fire rattled as a horde of shadowy Russian soldiers charged through the subway tunnel towards them. "Hey look I just put some Slams on you! Why don't you go and drive into those guys?"

"Oh okay! AAAHHHHHHHH!" Engineer roared as he instinctively turned the bike around and drove at the enemy, completely forgetting not only that Recon HADN'T put Slams on him and that they only worked on vehicles. Seconds later a Russian rocket launcher blew him to bits. Sora, Donald, Goofy, Medic and Recon all stared in glum silence. "HA HA HA! Very funny people!" Engineer growled over the radio.

They all dove for cover and began exchanging fire with the Russian team. Sora, Donald and Goofy got to work, charging in for close quarters combat while the soldiers covered them. But the heartless were swarming, Sora began to take gunfire, knocking him flat on the tracks, he narrowly avoided touching the electrified rails. Donald leapt down to his aid and had the misfortune of landing on rail, he twitched, glowed and pulsated with electric sparks for a few seconds before shooting up into the ceiling and falling flat on his beak at Sora's feet.

Sora sat up worriedly and looked at his fallen friend, only to fall backwards laughing. Donald's eyes rolled in his head, his feathers all stood on ends with smoky black tips. "Why yes, Daisy," Donald said. "I'd love to sing a little song for you…when your heart is in your dream…no request is too extreme…" Soon Goofy was laughing heartily at Sora's side, a hail of bullets cut them off. Goofy leapt in front of Donald and Sora, deflecting the bullet s with his shield. Moments later another transmission crackled over the radio.

"This is Level Cap. Jenny and the animals are all safe, we are sending you guys some reinforcements now." The ground began to rumble and the heartless soldiers' gunfire seemed to focus on something beyond Sora and the others.

"LAME ASS VEHICLE RAMPAGE!" Noob's voice wailed. Sora and the others looked back to see a Light Armored Vehicle rumbling down the tracks. Noob's voice screamed from the turret as he started firing wildly at the enemy, who vanished in bursts of darkness as the canon shells struck. "FULL SPEED AHEAD, SIMON! RAMMING SPEED!" Sora, Donald and Goofy leapt from the tracks just in time to dodge the oncoming metal death machine, the two Noobs inside cheered with oblivious glee.

"Alight! Great job Noobs!" Medic cheered them on.

"Wow!" Recon gasped. "I think they might actually be getting better!"

"Give them a moment…" Engineer grumbled. Just then, for no apparent reason, Simon swerved the LAV to the right, causing it to turn sideways then topple over on its side. To no one's surprise, neither soldier got out. The engine kept roaring and the tires kept turning, but the vehicle stopped moving.

"GO!" Noob screamed.

"GO!" repeated Simon. Both repeated the cry a few more times. "NOOB! GO!" Simon roared.

"I CAN'T!"

"WHY NOT?"

"YOU'RE DRIVING!"

"OH! SORRY! I FORGOT!"

"ARE YOU GOING?... ARE YOU GOING?!"

"YEAH BUT IT'S NOT WORKING! I THINK IT NEEDS REPAIRS OR SOMETHING!"

"OH NO! ENGINEER, CAN YOU COME AND FIX US?" Noob was cut short as he finished. Unbeknownst to either soldier, while they were sitting their screaming at each other, the heartless gathered around the immobilized LAV and patiently covered it with C4 explosives. They moved back and detonated just as Noob finished his question.

A few seconds later Noob and Simon spawned with angry glares, greeted by their squad mates, Sora, Donald, and Goofy all rolling with laughter. "HA HA HA HA!" Noob mocked them harshly. "That's NOT cool! That was like my best kill streak EVER!"

"You had like ten kills." Recon rolled his eyes.

"EXACTLY!"

"Whoa! Double digits!" Engineer chuckled. "That IS a big deal for you!"

"Oh shut up and just tell me where the red one went!" A moment of confused silence ensued. "The red heartless soldier that got me!" His squad mates rolled their eyes.

"Look Noob, for the LAST time!" Engineer seethed. "The kill cam ALWAYS makes the one that killed you RED SO YOU CAN TELL IT THE FUCK APART FROM THE OTHERS!" Engineer bellowed right into his face.

"ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?" Noob roared back.

"Oh yeah! I'm FUCKING YELLING AT YOU!" The screaming contest went on even as gunfire erupted from the enemy team. Goofy moved into place to shield them from the spray of bullets while Sora and Donald tried to wedge between Engineer and Noob.

"BE NICE! BE NICE! IT'S A DISNEY GAME AND A KID'S MOVIE!" Noobs ravings were interrupted by the roar of a car engine. A shadowy convertible pulled up, the gangster was back, reanimated by the power of darkness. The hoodlum drew his gun, training it on Sora's head. As if summoned by magic, the Colonel appeared behind him and thrust his blade deep into the heartless gangster's throat, downing him with a guttural laugh of bloodlust.

"WHAT ARE YOU NANCIES WAITING FOR? THE CHRISTMAS BALL? LET'S GET EM!" he growled before leading the charge into the fray. The rest of the squad followed, then the other squads surged from the other end of the tunnel and joined the battle. Tracers flicked back and forth throughout the subway. Grenades exploded in clouds of dirt and shrapnel. Rockets blasted holes in the concrete walls and tore up subway tracks. Sora, Donald, and Goofy looked at each other in awe of the carnage.

"Well, shall we?" Sora asked. Donald and Goofy raised their weapons in a cheer. With that, the three heroes rushed into the chaos that was their war of light vs darkness.

[meanwhile, in Radiant Garden]

Merlin stared in shock at the data screen. Cid, gave his usual look of cynical distaste. "Good heavens!" the wizard exclaimed. "They're hitting several worlds at once! Surly they must be stretching themselves thin!"

"You forget it's us who have limited resources," Cid replied. "The heartless have copy and pasted the program of Battlefield into their own magic. All they need to do is send their heartless into the system and they come out as enemy soldiers. They've always had overwhelming numbers on their side!"

Merlin blinked, shaking the shock from his face and dawning a stern frown. Cid was right. Whatever they could do, the enemy always seemed either to counter it or do it better. "Then there is no choice! We MUST divide our forces into smaller groups and halt them on multiple fronts!"

"Well it'll be even LESS fun for our soldiers," Cid huffed. "It'll be like fighting a pitched battle…literally! Big teams vs little teams. It'll just make the job a lot harder for them."

"We'll have to chance it," Merlin replied firmly. He wasn't looking forward to having to tell Sora and the others. No rest for the weary. He was grateful that Aerith and the Fairy Godmother were showing Jenny around the town and introducing them to the other girls. Radiant Garden was the only safe place for ANYONE until the Heartless were stopped.

[The French countryside, outside Paris]

Edgar giggled with glee at his luck. That odd fellow, Cobb, was very convenient in his arrival. He still wasn't quite sure what Cobb had to gain by helping him obtain Madam's fortune, hoping for a favor down the line most likely. The butler looked down at the basket in his motorcycle's guest buggy. Duchess and her kittens were fast asleep. He nodded to his hoodlum companions, who appeared doused in some ethereal darkness. Hardly a surprise to Edgar, since Cobb himself appeared and disappeared in a puff of black smoke. It had frightened him out of his wit the previous afternoon in his bedroom, but after years as a servant he'd learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Cobb and his ill-mannered minions could help him get what was owed him by that ungrateful old crone, he'd work with them.

He felt a bit uneasy as to why all twelve of them were so heavily armed. Where they expecting company? He got his answer in the form of a shrill cry. "CONQUEST AND KITTENS, MOTHERFUCKER!" Noob wailed from his motorcycle.

Edgar gasped in horror at multiple police vehicles driving straight at them, lights and sirens flashing and blaring. "MUTHAFLUKLAS ARE HERE!" one heartless criminal grunted.

"LET'S GET THE MUTHAFLUKLAS!" said another. The criminals zoomed ahead of Edgar, forming a protective formation around him, like a flying V.

"JIHAD BIKE, ANIMAL HATERS!" Noob roared as he leapt from his bike, clicking his detonator as his bike soared into the head of the heartless' formation. The 'Jeep Stuff' on the bike worked its magic. An inferno of criminals and fragments of motor cycles soared through the sky. Noob cheered with triumph, thankful that Cid figured out a way to unlock his Jeep Stuff without him having to level up on Hardline. Which Engineer had deeply resented as cheating.

The remaining heartless disembarked their bikes and opened fire on Noob, laying down cover for Edgar, now sprawled pathetically on the ground. The greedy butler trembled in terror. How could all this be happening? And all over a few mangy cats!

Level Cap sprang from his police car and covered Noob with short controlled bursts from his rifle. Noob, as usual, fired wildly with little effect. He managed to down a few heartless close by but only made the further off ones hesitate to stand. Simon roared by on the SUV to run over two criminals too far out for Noob to hit. "ANIMAL RESCUE ROAD RAGE!" Simon cheered.

Edgar looked frantically for the basket amid the wreck of his motorcycle. If he couldn't lose the cats in the forest somewhere, he'd strangle the little monsters himself. If his dreams of happiness died, so would Madam's. His eyes blazed red as they locked on to the basket, laying in the grass off to the side. The zipping bullets, the vulgar cries of his escorts, all sounded distant, Edgar's eyes were on the prize, the death of those filthy little beasts who were the bane of his existence. Duchess had fallen out of the basket and was now waking up in terror, hastily climbing back into the basket to protect her kittens from the butler she trusted as much as Madam. The kittens were awake now too, horrified at the clamor of the battle and the murder in their beloved caretaker's eyes.

"HEY!" a deep, gruff voice growled. Edgar turned from his prey to the large, round, but formidable figure of Administrator. His thick mustache stood on ends with anger. "ANIMAL CRUELTY! YOU'RE BANNED!" he roared with a swift boot swung into Edgar's balls. The butler fell to his knees with a high toned whine. "And just because I'm a cat person, FIST FIST BOOM!" Administrator finished with a punch to Edgar's face. The Englishman toppled backwards, his nose oozing blood, his two front teeth shattered, his eyes staring blankly.

Level Cap picked off the last of the heartless, then strode over to join Administrator and Noob. Simon pulled up in the SUV and rushed out. "Are you little guys alright?" asked Noob, crouching with the other three over the basket.

"You okay, little kitties?" Simon soothingly cooed.

"Don't worry, little fur balls, we got the bad guys!" Administrator huffed. Duchess and her kittens slowly came out to greet their rescuers, eyeing them in amazement.

"Oh good, you're all okay!" Level Cap sighed. Duchess purred Administrator, who petted her back gently. Each kitten chose one of the remaining soldiers. Noob picked up Marie, the little white one, with a smile.

"WE'RE SAVING KITTENS!" he cheered.

[Meanwhile, in Wonderland]

"We need to get in," Ammo Guy said to the door knob, which went on snoring in blissful sleep. "WE NEED TO GET IN!" he roared at the top of his lungs. The door knob snorted briefly out of sleep.

"Use the bottle," it told him. Ammo Guy stood to look at the table, with two different bottles, remembering this movie from his childhood, he'd have none of it. "OH NO! I'M NOT PUTTING UP WITH THAT SHIT! YOU'RE GONNA LET US IN! AND WE'RE NOT GONNA BE LITTLE LEPERCHAUNS FOR THAT FAT QUEEN TO SICK HER POKER DECK ON!" Ammo Guy ranted, only to fume with rage as the doorknob went on softly snoring.

"Hey bra," Choppie patted him on the shoulder. "Let me try, bra." He crouched down to look at the doorknob eye to eye. "Hey bra!" Choppie said. Nothing but snores. "Hey Bra!" he repeated. "Hey bra!" he said again, this time twisting and turning the knob's nose. The doorknob winced awake and huffed indignantly at him. "Open the door, bra!" Choppie said.

"The bottle…" the knob muttered as he drifted back to sleep.

"WE NEED TO GET IN!" Ammo Guy roared.

"Hey bra!" Choppie turned to his best friend.

"WHAT?"

"He won't open the door."

"I KNOW THAT!"

"Maybe there's a key, bra!"

"I've got your key," Colonel growled, pushing past both of them. "Right here," he hissed as he stuck a slab of C4 on the little door. He and the other two stepped to the other end of the room, where Colonel clicked the detonator. The little door vanished in a blast of fire and wood. The brass doorknob struck the ceiling and landed at their feet with a clang. To the disbelief of all three, it was still snoring in complete ignorance of what had happened.

"OH YEAH!" Ammo Guy cheered. "LOOK AT YOU NOW! NOT GONNA MAKE US TAKE THAT SHORTY POTION NOW!" he finished before kicking the brass doorknob down the hallway they had just walked down. "NOW LET'S DO THIS!" he rushed to the door, but still found it too small, to his astonishment, the bigger door, the small door appeared to be part of, had not been destroyed in the blast.

"Looks like we're down-sizing," Colonel grunted, snatching up the bottle and taking a drink. Ammo Guy and Choppy did the same. Now shrunk down to the appropriate size, they wondered through the little doorway.

They found themselves in a large cubic chamber, decked out to be some kind of royal garden. A setting they all recognized from their childhoods and the nightmares that ensued from the movie. They entered the queen's court through an arch in the hedge and froze stunned at the slaughter before them. Scattered all over the garden were the Red Queen's card soldiers, all lying motionless, pocked with bullet holes. Atop the large podium at the far end of the chamber stood the Red Queen, shrouded in a mist of darkness. A horde of heartless soldiers stood before her as she laughed maniacally. Her gaze flared to a heightened degree of rage as she caught glimpse of the three interlopers.

"INTRUDERS!" the Red Queen bellowed, thrusting her fat, pointed finger at them. "How DARE you invade my domain!"

"OH YEAH, FATSO!" Ammo Guy growled. "Well we're gonna," he stopped short as he noticed Colonel was no long standing between himself and Choppy, who shrugged in bewilderment.

"SILENCE!" the red-faced monarch raged. "Soldiers, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" her last word was cut short as her head exploded in a mighty blast. The headless corpse of the Red Queen fell from the podium and landed with a splat at the feet of her soldiers. Taking her place atop the podium rail stood Colonel, smoking shotgun in hand.

"Hail to the King, baby!" he growled as he racked the shotgun and turned his hungry gaze down to the heartless below. Across the chamber, Ammo Guy and Choppy stared in silent disbelief.

"How'd he do that, bra?" Choppy finally asked.

[Italian Adriatic coastline, 1930s]

Porco squinted through his bruised eyes, desperately trying to keep focused on the fascist fighters zipping around him. Curtis was watching his flank, breaking off only to exchange fire with Mussolini's flyboys. After the fistfight in the water, Porco had been ready to pass out. But Gina's kiss had awoken something inside him. Was it love? The realization that some things ARE worth dying for? Porco wasn't sure. Wasn't sure of a lot of things. Wasn't sure his face felt quite right, probably the cuts and bruises, he figured. Curtis had seemed fixated on his face before they took off. They barely had time to reload their machine guns with what little ammo they had left in their cargo holds. Not nearly enough to take on the horde of fighters upon them. Maybe they should have just made a run for it. Drawn Mussolini's boys off away from the other pirates, Fio, and Gina…

Porco shook his head and unleashed a burst of machinegun fire into another fascist. The plane crumbled and burst into flame. Two more zoomed in behind and peppered his crimson plane. Porco wasn't sure what was holding his bucket of bolts together! From below it must have looked like a big red block of Swiss cheese with wings! Ahead of him, Curtis was playing cat and mouse with another pair of fascists. Porco grunted, it didn't look like they'd be getting out of this one.

A rattle of machineguns echoed from behind and the two fighters on Porco's tail were ripped to shreds. Three old World War One biplanes with the unmistakable target insignia of the British Royal Air Force zoomed by. Porco could hear the cheers and shouts on the wind, they didn't sound British.

"TAKE THAT YOU FASCIST NOOBS! WOOOOO!" one cheered.

"HELL YEAH!" cried another.

"YEAH! THAT'S RIGHT! TIME TO SHOW ANTIFA WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO FIGHT FASCISM!" shouted one, Porco looked to see the pilot had a thick brown beard.

"HEY! WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT BRINGING UP POLITICS?"

"FUCK THAT BULLSHIT! SHOOT THE FUCKING ENEMY, BITCH!" the bearded one whooped loud as he unleashed a torrent of fire on the enemy. Porco looked over his opposite shoulder at Curtis, who turned to him and shrugged in confusion. They weren't with him. Porco returned the shrug and dove his plane to open fire on another enemy.

The battle raged on for several more minutes. Soon Medic pulled up alongside Porco to explain in shouts that they were there to help. Porco nodded, relaying the message to Curtis. They all turned their attention back to the enemy. There'd be plenty of time for questions and answers later. Engineer was on a kill streak, cheering with increasingly psychotic glee as he blasted each fascist to pieces. Recon was struggling to keep up with Engineer's kill count, their rivalry was coming to a head. Medic hung back and tried to cover Porco and Curtis as best he could, their planes were in bad shape. Eventually a lone fighter snuck up behind him and opened fire. Medic frantically turned up his nose and climbed high, hoping to make a loop flank his opponent. Suddenly his plane stopped in mid-air with a violent jerk.

"Oh dammit! Not this again!" Medic seethed. "Cid said this wouldn't happen again!"

"He said it 'probably' wouldn't," Recon corrected. "Don't worry, I'll come back and cover you!"

"No don't bother, I'm just gonna stay here and wait for that little shit to take me out! I'm a SITTING DUCK!" Much to Medic's annoyance. The fascist fighter, its shadowy pilot barely visible in the cockpit, had already moved on to more lively prey. "This is bullshit!" Medic grunted.

"Just redeploy!" Recon huffed as he banked to avoid a spray of gunfire.

"I SHOULDN'T NEED TO! THIS SHIT WAS SUPPOSE TO WORK!"

"Just redeploy and let Cid know! OH SHIT!" Recon gasped at two fighters charging him from the front! Recon was sure he wouldn't make it.

"KAMAKAZI TIME!" a shrill cry on the wind sounded as another biplane crashed into one fighter, and proceeding into the other before exploding itself! "ALRIGHT! DOUBLE KILL!" Noob's cheered.

"Dammit Noob!" Recon growled.

"He's doing it again!" Engineer hissed. "HE'S DOING IT AGAIN! HE ALWAYS WASTES THE DAMN PLANES!"

"How can I waste an infinite amount of planes?" Noob asked.

"Because you should have just shot them down!" Recon explained calmly, for the umpteenth time. "You could still be here helping us win but now you're waiting to respawn. We're supposed to be protecting Porco until the last of the Heartless are gone!"

"But I'm good at this! I can actually get kills this way!" Noob whined. "How is this different from Engineer's slam traps?"

"OH NO! DON'T YOU DARE!" Engineer bellowed. "YOU LEAVE THEM OUT OF THIS! THE DIFFERENCES IS I CAN'T DIE FROM THOSE OR LOSE A QUAD BIKE!"

"I STILL SAY CID SHOULD PATCH THAT! YOU ALWAYS PLAYING DIRTY YOU JUNKIE!"

"YOU TAKE THAT BACK! PATCH YOUR EYES! PATCH YOUR MOUTH! YOUR MOUTH IS IN NEEDING OF A PATCH! PATCH YOU RIGHT OUT OF THE SERVER NOOB!" Engineer ranted on until a fascist fighter flanked him and sent his plane up in a blazing inferno. The Heartless pilot barely had time laugh in triumph before Noob's plane spawned above him, then abruptly dove down on top of him, destroying them both. Moments later another shrill cry echoed.

"ALRIGHT, AVENGER KILL!" a burst of noise, a gasp of surprise. "PROMOTED! PROMOTED! PROMOTED!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP NOOB!"

Meanwhile Medic sat in defeated fury. His plane still frozen in the air. A beached whale in the sky. "Dammit to fucking hell…" he grumbled. Nearby Porco and Curtis both exchanged glances and shrugs again.

[Galaxy Toys]

Woody and Buzz stood back to back, ready to fight to the bitter end against the horde of Heartless surrounding them. Stomping up from nearby were several Mech figures, driven by tiny Heartless soldiers. Their odds of survival looked bleak.

Woody cursed himself for having insisted on venturing back to Galaxy Toys. Rex and Ham had wondered back their hours ago; Rex for want of more gaming guides and Ham more out of boredom. They hurriedly returned to Andy's room, claiming to have seen strange toys appear in the store. They looked like toy soldiers, only not the little green men of Sarge's unit. Hopeful that the reappearance of toys could mean the return of Bow and the others, Woody stubbornly chose to go and see for himself. Buzz objected, not for very long, before rushing after him. Both discovered too late that the little soldiers were not toys, but miniature humans, themselves possessed by the Heartless. Where was Sora when they needed him?

With clenched fists, the two best friends readied for the fight of their lives. The Heartless soldiers took aim, then suddenly several explosions rocked their ranks, knocking Woody and Buzz to their knees and sending many Heartless flying. Machine gun fire rattled, the big Mechs turned to the rear joined the battle. Moments later several more Mechs appeared and opened up on the enemy Mechs. Cries of child-like giddiness echoed.

"HELL YEAH!" one roared.

"And in these Mechs they all look like little Ants!" said another, high-pitched, voice. "ANTS!" he screamed as his Mech began mercilessly punching down on the smaller Heartless soldiers.

"Oh COME ON, SIMON!" Medic fussed nearby. "I told you to leave the little ones to US! You focus on the Mechs!"

"Naw, relax!" Noob interrupted, firing furiously at the soldiers with his Mech's cannon. "We got these little guys! We can get even more kills like this!"

"You wimps!" Recon hissed. "You just want easy kills!"

"Yeah! Awesome isn't it?"

"Yeah man, let em have their fun!" Engineer butted in. "You sissies just leave these Mech fuckers to me! KABLAM! KAPLA!" Engineer cheered as he unleashed his charging attack on two Mechs at once. "HELL YEAH! TAKE THAT IMC!"

"Wait! IMC?" Medic paused a moment in thought. "Like from Titan Fall?"

"Damn right from Titan Fall!" Engineer replied. "That shit was AWESOME!"

"You DO realize it was basically a carbon copy of Call of Duty right?"

"HEY SHUT UP! It has bigger maps and the coolest vehicles in EVER!" Engineer roared in defense. "DON'T JUDGE ME! YOU CLOSET COD FAN! DON'T HOP UP ON YOUR LITTLE HIGH HORSE, AND BE JUDGE JUDY LIKE BITCH!"

Medic sighed, seeing the futility in arguing. "YEAH AND STOP FUSSING AT US FOR TRYING TO GET A BETTER KILL DEATH RATIO! LIKE A JUDGE JUDY BITCH!" Noob yelled. Again Medic sighed, Recon patted him on the shoulder. They sensed the motion behind them too late, turning around to see several enemies taking aim. Before they even had time to bring up their own weapons a large metal fist came down from above and crushed the Heartless to oblivion. Both stared up in surprise at Simon's Mech.

"SAVED YOU, JUDGE JUDY BITCH!" Simon taunted.

[Feudal Japan]

The men of Iron Town trembled in terror at the approach of the oncoming horde. An army of massive pigs, each several times the size of a man, charging right at them. They forced themselves to steady their hands, holding their flints close as they prepared to fire their hand cannons. The mass of giant pigs looked even more terrifying as they approached. A mist of darkness seemed to radiate from their bodies, their eyes blazing balls of yellow fire. The men dug their heels into the ground, their women back home were tough but none of them would ever have face this horror, not while they yet lived.

"EVERYBODY JUST CHILL!" a strange foreigner said as he strode casually above their earth works with a large, strange looking weapon in his hands.

"We got this," said another foreign soldier with a darker skin tone. They both aimed their weapons, which made a brief surging noises before unleashing two mighty blasts into the oncoming stream of swine. The smell of burning pork filled the air as the green blast of the weapons sent dozens up in a blaze of intense heat.

The men of Iron Town watched in bafflement as the two foreigners laughed and cackled with insane joy at the carnage. The pigs were startled but after a moment continued their charge. The two soldiers calmly turned back to them, leveled their weapons and fired. After another geyser of fried pig and another moment of insane laughter, they fired again. Their laughter caught in their throats as they both tried to fire a fourth time only for the rail guns to click dry.

"Oh no! We forgot you only get three rounds!" Medic hissed.

"AMMO! WE NEED AMMO!" Engineer wailed.

"Ammo won't work, remember?"

"OH GOD WE NEED AMMO!" Engineer balled, oblivious of what Medic just said. "OH GOD WE NEED AMMO! OH GOD! WOOOOOOOOOO!" His tantrum stopped abruptly as Colonel walked up, his usual look of distaste on his face. "Colonel, you're support! You can give us Ammo!"

"Ammo's for Nancy's!" he grunted drawing his knife. Choppy swooped in low with a chopper for Colonel to grab ahold of the rail. The men of Iron Town trembled in horror at the deafening flying machine as it thundered over them and towards the charging pigs. A tiny figure parachuted down among the horde and one by one the pigs began to fall. Engineer, Medic, and the huddled hand peasants with guns looked on in disbelief.

[meanwhile in Iron Town]

"GET OUT OF HERE!" the young woman roared in Noob's face.

"No, I can't, we need to lay down cover fire for our team. This is the perfect place up here," Noob calmly explained. They had arrived just as the Heartless soldiers appeared to kill the remaining samurai and turned to attack the women and lepers of Iron Town, now pushed back to the inner sanctum.

"Darling, maybe we should listen to the man," the woman's timid husband said. "After all they did show up and protect us from those shadowy people."

"OH SHUT UP!" she bellowed in her husband's face. "NO ONE ASKED YOU! AND WE HAVE ENOUGH _MEN_ AROUND HERE AS IS! WE DON'T WANT THEM HERE!" her husband slinked back in submission. The other women and bandaged lepers looked to each other in dismay. Some of them huddled behind their defacto leader but ost of them were grateful for the help, things had not been going well.

"Well that's not very nice!" Noob protested.

"Yeah!" Simon said. "Can she be ANYMORE annoying dude?" He asked the beleaguered husband. Who sighed in response and shook his head, prompting a furious glare from his wife, causing him to stumble back further.

Gamer Girl approached from with a sigh. "You better let me stay up here and give cover," she said.

"No its okay, Simon and I got this," Noob answered. "And I'm a sniper now, so this is a good spot."

"Yeah but she and the others don't want you here."

"Why not?" Noob asked. Gamer Girl rolled her eyes, realizing neither one of them had seen the movie.

"Because you're men," she explained, realizing after the fact how sexist that statement was.

"That's what I JUST SAID!" the woman roared.

"Hey! That's discrimination!" Simon said indignantly.

"YEAH!" Noob agreed.

"Well, welcome to the middle ages!" Gamer Girl sighed. "Look she's not going to calm down unless you guys leave."

"It's actually technically the Renaissance period, not Middle Ages," said Simon, who apparently HAD seen the movie.

"Yeah, come on guys," Recon cut in over the radio, gunfire crackled in the background. "We need all the help we can get and you guys are wasting time up there."

"And for the last time," Ammo Guy cut in. "I NEED AMMO!"

"No way!" Noob persisted. "We're staying right here! We're like Rosa Parks!"

"WHAT?" Gamer Girl gasped, herself an African American.

"WE'RE THE ROSA PARKS OF DISNEY!" Noob and Simon screamed in unison.

"NO YOU'RE NOT!" She bellowed with them. "And it's not Disney its GHIBLI! They're just LISCENCED by Disney!

"It's the same thing!" said Noob.

"It's actually, not," Recon chimed in.

"AMMO!" Ammo Guy screamed.

"I CAN'T GIVE YOU AMMO, I'M A SNIPER!" Noob hissed into the radio.

"I can, I have Ammo!" said Simon.

"GOOD! BRING IT HERE! DOWN BY THE GATE!"

"Alright, look," Gamer Girl said, collecting herself. "Noob, you go and protect Simon on the way, I'll stay here and give cover. It's the only way, Rosie over here will shut up!"

"FINE! Forget this, we're outa here! Come on, Simon!" the two Noobs rushed off towards the main gate. Gamer Girl sighed deeply.

"About time those stupid MEN left!" the woman hissed. That was the last straw.

"Okay, you know what?" Gamer Girl hissed in her face. "I am getting REAL SICK OF THAT SHIT YOU LITTLE BITCH!" she roared. "You know most of my team ARE men! And we CAME HERE TO SAVE YOU! ALSO, I'll bet your little hubby there is BONING half the bitches in this town behind your back the way you treat him!" the woman tumbled back at the hostility of one of her own.

"It's not true, sweetie," her husband was at her side in an instant. "I'd never do that to you!" he said with perfect sincerity. Which only made Gamer Girl angrier. Sure guys can be pigs, a certain bearded one on her team in particular. But this little shrew blew it WAY out of proportion. The woman was finding her courage and stepping up to shout back at her when several Heartless soldiers climbed over the fortress wall behind them. The girls and lepers fumbled with their muskets. Gamer Girl knew they were too late, leaping in between them and the enemy, hoping she could save at least some of them.

To her amazement, Colonel fell from the sky at just the right instant. Swiftly slicing the enemies to bits with his knife in a matter of seconds. With the death of the last Heartless, he turned his glare to the now-shocked wife, her arms thrown around her husband. "Male-on-deck, Judge Judy Bitch," he growled walking away.

[Southern coast of England, 1940]

Eglantine Price tried to desperately to grapple the oldest of her orphan charges free of the German soldier's grip. She never would have asked Charles to fetch her notes if she knew the brute would grab him like that. If only she had her notes with her she could teach all of them a lesson in manners. Within moments the German Colonel at her table roared over the ruckus. "QUIET!" All went silent in an instant.

"Frauline, we have work to do! I must send all of you some place where you will no longer be a nuisance!" he snapped, continuing on in German, one of his men approached and instructed Ms. Price and her three orphans to follow him.

This had not been the best day of her life. The three children the government had entrusted to her care were starting to grow on her. But the con artist who had unknowingly been selling her REAL magic spells and retreated for the train station the moment one of the children implied romance between him and her. Shortly after, while letting her cat out for the night, two German soldiers muscled their way inside and destroyed her phone. In the hour since then, her home had become the field HQ of the German army. The fact that the Colonel in charge had assured her this was NOT the full invasion, but a scare tactic to demoralize the country into suing for peace, did not appease her anger.

"Colonel, sir!" another German soldier rushed into the room, carrying some kind of metal device.

"What is it, private?" he sneered.

"Sir, strange Gestop agent with us, Herr Cobb, he has vanished!" the Colonel blinked in surprise. "One moment he was there, the next he was gone! And this was on the floor where he had been standing! Ms. Price blinked in surprise at the ovular, metal device, with a strange tripod stand attached. The soldier stepped closer to the Colonel when the device began to flash green and beep loudly at regular intervals. Before anyone could say anything there was a flash of light and two strangely dressed soldiers were standing there, the German stumbled back in surprise.

"Oh Good, we made it!" Noob said with a smile.

"Cool!" the little boy, Paul, gasped beside Ms. Price. Noob turned to smile and wave at the kid, then stopped in surprise as he noticed Ms. Price.

"Wait a minute, don't I know you?" Noob asked. Ms. Price, shocked speechless like almost everyone in the room, blinked and shook her head.

"Wait! You're right, we do!" Recon said. "She's from that uh…mystery series!"

"CIS?"

"No."

"NCIS?"

"No. The like really old one."

"Oh, you mean Law and Order?"

"NO! From like the 80s! The one about the reporter lady who always solves the crime!"

"Oh my Mom likes to watch that! Cool!"

"Where are we anyway? At least we're safe! I didn't like the idea of just firing a TUGS at a world. Maybe we should have just let Sora scout it out for us like before…Oh shit!"

"What?" Noob blinked, turning to the startled eyes of Recon.

"Dude, look around!" Noob scanned the area, his eyes widened at the shocked gazes; most having drawn guns.

"Oh, there's Natzies here!"

"I know, we're surrounded!"

"THERE'S NATZIES HERE!"

"Holy shit…" Recon slowly raised is hands in submission, followed by Noob. The German soldiers didn't even look possessed by the Heartless. He blinked as he woefully realized which movie they were in.

"Mine Got Neine!" a voice cried out from outside the house. Muffled shouts went up with hushed noises of metal slashing flesh. Gunshots rang out, followed by more slashing noises. The German soldiers inside the house rushed out to their comrade's aid. The German Colonel was left alone with Noob, Recon, Ms. Price and the children. He nervously drew his side-arm, trembling as sounds of shocked cries and a blade slashing cut short the gunfire. All went silent for a moment, the Colonel grew even more nervous.

"WHAT IS THIS?" he demanded, shakily leveling his pistol at Noob and Recon. A knife plunged into his throat from behind, ending his worries. Colonel grunted a warlike snicker over his kill.

"Oh! Uh, good evening Sir!" Recon said, offering a shaky salute, followed by Noob.

"Oh and a fine Nazi killing evening to you too boys!" Colonel grunted. "That's kill number thirty for me!"

"But we just got here! And they're not even Heartless!"

"Oh well, score thirty points extra for the good guys! Now let's get back to the Nazi killing! There's a U-Boat anchored out in the bay. Race you to it!" he finished drawing his knife and rushing past the bewildered woman and three children.

[The Valley of the Wind]

"Alright everybody gather around!" Engineer said. The whole twelve-man team was gathered at the beach. The queen, being held at knife-point by Colonel, had ordered her men to stop shooting at the oncoming Ome, the colossal roly-poly-like insects were chargine straight at the valley. The neighboring kingdom had succeeded in baiting the titanic hive-mind monsters into attacking their enemy. The misty blackness and shiny yellow tinge of their eyes made it clear. The Heartless were driving the Ome now, even though most of the team knew Naussica had rescued the little baby Ome being used as bait. Darkness had taken them and they wanted blood.

Knowing how the story was supposed to end, they had originally thought to do nothing. But then they noticed the shroud of darkness and the yellow eyes (formerly glowing red with anger). None of that was in the movie. It was up to them to set things right. A radio call to Cid was all it took to project a certain favorite Easter Egg into this world.

"Okay is everyone here?" asked Engineer.

"All here!" grunted Colonel, with the invading queen in tow.

"Alright!"

"Woohoo!"

"We're finally gonna see it!" The team mates cheered as the Ome horde trampled closer across the inky-black ocean in front of them.

"Okay it's gonna hit soon!" Engineer called out as the giant bugs drew nearer. "And,"

"MEGLADON!" They all cheered. The black waters were undisturbed. No massive shark emerged to swallow and crush the possessed insects.

"And in 3," Engineer began.

"2, 1, MEGLADON!" Everyone finished.

"WHERE'S THE MEGLADON?" Noob wailed. "WHERE'S THE MEGLADON?"

"Is Colonel still here?" asked Medic.

"Soldiers, I think we forgot something," Colonel grimaced with wide-eyes and pointed out to sea. The skeleton of a giant fish briefly breached the water before slowly disintegrating. Now most of the team was staring in shocked remembrance. The ocean was made of acid…

"Back to plan B, then!" Colonel sneered, drawing his knife.

"Wait!" Medic cried. "It's acid, it'll burn you too!"

"Bitch, please," he growled, drawing a shiny five point star with thin black eyes from his pocket and popping it in his mouth. Colonel began to shimmer and shine, a familiar video game jingle playing faintly as he jumped into the corrosive water and swam toward the charging foe. The team watched in amazement.

[Radiant Garden]

Cid looked puzzled at the data. All these different worlds had been hit in such a short time. Yet they rarely seemed to have any particular goal, apart from carnage and destruction. Even places like Arendal and Corona had been attacked. Some of the higher skilled players like Colonel, Level Cap, and Closet Colonel had been able to clear those of enemy presence with ease.

"What are they after?" Cid asked himself out loud. With New York, Devils Bayou, and Moscow, their objectives were clear, the girls. But they still hadn't figured out what they even WANTED with the girls. They weren't princesses. They certainly weren't the new Princesses of Hearts. Getting up from his seat, he decided to talk to Merlin. Thoughtfully making his way out of the fortress and down to the village street, he was practically on auto-pilot. Different scenarios playing out in his mind. Hopefully Merlin could help him make sense of it all. There seemed to be no practical reason to attack all those different worlds. Unless…

Cid's eyes widened as he remembered something Leon had shared in conversation a while back. A trick he learned in his officer training school in his world of origin. A military tactic in which the initial attack, or attacks, are just a rouse to draw the enemy out and away from the REAL attack. The security system hadn't sounded the alarm, but that didn't mean the enemy didn't have some kind of trick up their sleeve.

"Cloud, Leon!" Cid grunted into his radio. "Get to Merlin's house. We might have a situation." He finished as he approached Merlin's front door. Not even bothering to knock, he swung the door wide open and froze instantly. Cloud and Leon were already there, kneeling on the floor with swords to their backs. Merlin lay knocked out on the floor, Penny, Jenny, and Match Girl sobbing at his side. The room was filled with unsavory looking swordsmen in armor and one short but nasty looking green ogre sneering at the girls. A warrior in golden armor raised his visor and smirked darkly at Cid.

"Well, little Princesses," he giggled. "Looks like we have another guest!" A strong foot wrapped in a hard leather boot swung up into Cid's stomach, knocking him to his knees. The swordsman in the golden armor casually stepped up. His gloved hand reached down and grabbed the remote to Radiant Garden's security system off his belt. "I'll bet we can have some fun with this!" he finished with a wicked chuckle before kicking Cid out of consciousness.


End file.
